Mentoring to solve a scaling social issue
A partnership between PwC Italy and Ashoka, the Social Innovation to tackle fuel poverty program aims at helping low income families and individuals struggling to afford basic energy costs. The project calls on social innovators to find new and creative ways to tackle the issue.
Setting the scene
The European Energy Poverty Observatory defines fuel poverty as “the inability to keep the home adequately warm at an affordable cost”. In Europe fuel poverty is recognized as a scaling social issue that affects those on low household incomes, retirees, the unemployed and dependents of social security benefits.
It is estimated that fuel poverty affects more than 3.9 million families in Italy every year. The Italian Government took action and established a social tariff for vulnerable electricity consumers and the Energy Regulatory is developing a similar mechanism for the gas market.
PwC Italy and Ashoka, whose mission is to find and cultivate social entrepreneurs in every corner of the world, whose systems-changing innovations solve deep-rooted social problems extended their long-term collaboration to develop the Social Innovation to tackle fuel poverty program.
The program called for social innovators to find new ways to tackle fuel poverty to support the people and communities affected and promote energy sustainability. From this out call, 15 startups were selected who received support through a fully-funded personalised mentoring program by high-achieving business consultants and mentors, who helped them develop strategies to scaleup and amplify their innovative projects.
Social and micro enterprises have the ability to transform markets. Across the globe we are sharing our expertise to help them scale for even more impact.
How we helped
A team of professionals from PwC Italy shared their skills and experience in all areas of business support from refining strategy, project management, ensuring the entrepreneurs kept to timelines and focused on the goal, project analysis and analytical support and critical thinking in all areas of documentation preparation and submission.
In a mentoring role our team of professionals worked with the enterprises to understand the social venture in detail, identified strategies to scale and helped sharpen the pitch so the entrepreneurs and their ideas were ready to shine during the final Globalizer Summit.
PwC Italy plans to provide ongoing business mentoring and pro bono support to the social enterprises as they continue to look a innovative ways to tackle fuel poverty in Italy.
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Colm Kelly
Global Corporate Sustainability Leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited
Global Corporate Sustainability Managing Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited