July marked the start of beVisioneers, a one-of-a-kind global fellowship for environmental action. Chosen from more than 1 000 applicants around the world, the first 100 young innovators – a third of whom are South African – are now embarking on a 12-month learning journey, equipping them to bring their planet-positive ideas to life.
What is beVisoneers?
Funded by donations from Mercedes-Benz and designed and implemented by independent, non-profit education pioneers The DO School Fellowships, beVisioneers is building the world’s biggest global fellowship for young environmental innovators, with plans to expand it to 1 000 eco-preneurs per year from around the world in 2025.
beVisioneers selects its fellows irrespective of background and with a strong focus on financial inclusion. The programme, which includes weekly online lessons, one-on-one mentoring and guidance from world-class experts, is free to all fellows. In addition, beVisioneers offers financial stipends for those in need and merit-based access to project funding. After completing the programme and launching their projects, fellows continue to receive training and support to scale their projects and become ambassadors for environmental change in their respective regions.
This year’s inaugural cohort of 100 fellows comes approximately one-third from South Africa and one-third from India, with the remaining third representing Germany, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and the UK. The programme truly kicks off in July, when the beVisioneers meet in-person for the first time at one of three regional summits — in Johannesburg, South Africa; Pune, India; or Stuttgart, Germany.
Some of the Saffa beVisioneers:
Besides their age group, 16 to 28, what all fellows have in common is a strong personal vision, clear motivation and a viable project that benefits the environment.
Nthabiseng Mabetlela: Keeping the lights on
Nthabiseng is a 23 year old computer science graduate from Johannesburg. She joins the beVisoneers programme with the Aorta Project – a peer-to-peer energy trading platform that she conceptualised to connect homeowners who have solar panels to tenants who don’t. She aims to create a digital network that will enable communities to become self-sustaining, without having to rely on Eskom or use fossil-fuelled generators.
“The idea came to me during a time when my community had to go through four days without power due to some mishap at our area’s power substation,” she recalls. “My neighbours across from me and down the road had solar panels and I just remembered thinking, ‘Why can’t they just give me their power?’, and I think this was my Eureka moment.”
This is not Nthabiseng’s first rodeo when it comes to environmental impact and climate activism. She won an innovation award for an eco-friendly battery that she conceptualised as part of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund’s Efeng Bacha Leadership Programme. And in 2019, she was part of MIT Global Startup Labs.
Nthabiseng’s project is still in the ideation phase, but she hopes to get it up and running as soon as possible, and beVisoneers was just the opportunity she was looking for. And if all goes according to plan, she’ll have a prototype by the end of the project. “Being selected really felt like a massive thumbs up to my idea and my decision to merge these two worlds of mine – climate activism and tech entrepreneurship.”
Buyiswa Twala: Reinvigorating barren soil
Buyiswa, a 22 year old school assistant, was volunteering at a non-profit organisation that was starting farms in schools and teaching children how to farm when the idea that would become Agrigreat Solitech & Envirocare occurred to her.
With a Higher Certificate in life and environmental sciences (she’s also about to register for a degree in biochemistry), Buyiswa was tasked with creating fertiliser and compost from organic waste. However, the task proved more challenging than anticipated. “I came to the realisation that the soil in the informal settlement that we were working in was extremely damaged, barren and unable to produce proper vegetation,” she recalls.
Undeterred, Buyiswa got to work, and by using different kinds of waste and organic material, she eventually worked out her own formula. And soon enough, the soil, after treatment with her organic waste mixture, was able to produce the healthiest and biggest vegetation it ever could. She quickly realised that there was scope for her soil regeneration solution to have a broader application beyond the project she was involved in at the time.
For Buyiswa, being selected for beVisoneers is an opportunity to turn her micro-enterprise into an idea that has the potential to be world-changing and make a positive impact.
“I have a vision of nutritious and organic food being accessible to all people of different social standings. So, with this organic product, my biggest dream is to see it being used in areas such as dormant mines and extremely degraded soil for the purpose of turning those areas into community gardens and dealing with the food insecurity issues we have in Africa from a ground level.”
Maya Zaken – Using insect larvae to create lasting change
Maya Zaken is a 25 year old city-dweller-turned-farmer, who believes that small-scale agriculture can create a big impact. A desire to create sustainable change led her to agriculture, and eventually to starting her company, Philafeed, with her partner Jason Fine.
“Growing up in Johannesburg, I was once so disconnected from food as a whole,” she muses. “However, as I delved deeper into understanding food systems and the tremendous time, labour and effort invested in producing just one cucumber, my appreciation for food and food systems grew immensely.”
Maya was introduced to the black soldier fly by a fellow impact maker and quickly saw the potential for a sustainable agricultural venture. “In short, black soldier fly larvae are incredible insects that work like tiny recycling machines!” she explains. “They devour all sorts of organic matter, like food scraps, manure, and even compost. The larvae are a nutritious food source for animals, making them a sustainable alternative to traditional livestock feed. Frass is a term used to describe the waste material excreted by the black soldier fly larvae after they consume organic matter. It serves as a natural fertilizer for soil and can help plants grow healthier and stronger.”
For Maya, being accepted into the beVisioneers programme is a big step towards achieving her vision. By spreading her sustainable practices far and wide, she aims to close multiple community food loops, empower communities, implement circular waste management and contribute to a greener, healthier future for the nation.
Debbie Mogale: Fighting menstrual poverty and empowering girls
It takes a special type of person to step up and start doing something about the inequalities in the world. Debbie Mogale, 24, is such a person. Aside from being on a graduate programme at a Fintech business, she runs an active NPO, The Debbie De Foundation, which donates disposable sanitary pads to girls and women in marginalised communities.
“This has proven to be helpful but not sufficient to the environment and the lives of young girls and women,” says Debbie. “We have done various outreach programmes and have been exposed to the living conditions of young girls and women from marginalised communities. Naturally I asked, how can I make things better? How can I promote sustainability and self-sufficiency? The answers to those questions led me to my project idea.”
With these questions on her mind, Debbie began to envision a new type of menstrual product that could be beneficial in multiple ways. “My project idea aims to curb menstrual poverty (when young girls are unable to attend school because of their menstrual period) and improve waste management in rural communities by producing reusable sanitary towels,” she says. “What makes the model stand out is that we aim to take the project and use it as an extra-curriculum in schools by teaching young girls and women how to sew their own reusable pads.”
Currently, the project is still at ideation stage – the business plan and strategy are in place, and Debbie and her team of 20 volunteers have begun sewing trials of the reusable sanitary pads. Debbie hopes the beVisoneers programme will give her the boost she needs to take it to the next level.
Linda Kaumphawi: The waste warrior
Growing up in Winterveldt, a township on the outskirts of Pretoria, Linda lived in a community that did not have any waste management provisions. “Unfortunately, we relied on an illegal dumping site to get rid of our waste,” she recalls. “I wanted to come up with a solution that involves communities to manage their own waste instead of waiting for provision from elsewhere.” This led the 27 year old Linda to conceptualise Evergreen Solutions, a comprehensive, multipronged approach to waste management.
One part of Linda’s plan is a new type of waste bag for people without access to multiple bins to use in their homes. “It is a refuse bag that incorporates two compartments within a single bin, enabling the separation of organic wet waste from inorganic dry waste,” she explains. “The purpose of this design is to promote waste segregation at the source, which is a critical step in effective waste management and recycling.”
Linda envisions different colours or labels indicating the purpose of each compartment and these compartments will be separated upon disposal. A local university helped with the feasibility study for the bag; now she’s looking for a manufacturer.
Linda is also developing a digital marketplace called e-dumpsite, which will create a circular economy marketplace for waste. “The platform serves as a connection point between waste sellers and buyers, with a particular focus on manufacturers,” she explains.
For Linda, the beVisioneers fellowship is an opportunity to turn her vision into reality. ”By the end of the programme, I hope to have successfully implemented the project, and I hope to have established valuable connections, partnerships, or collaborations with other sustainability-focused organisations or individuals,” she says.
Other innovating projects in the BeVisioneers Global Eco-preneur Programme involve micro wind turbines, drain systems for flood mitigation and sustainable building materials from upcycled sawdust.
“We are thrilled with the project ideas and leadership potential of our first 102 fellows,” says Mariah Levin, Executive Director of beVisioneers. “Young people want to actively mitigate the consequences of climate change.”
Katherin Kirschenmann, Founder and Managing Director of The DO School Fellowships, adds, “So many have invaluable contributions to make, but have not found a path to advance from idea to action. beVisioneers is here to change that. Through innovative approaches to knowledge, network, and venture building, our programme supports fellows to transform ideas into tangible solutions for entrepreneurs.”
