An opportunity to review the main achievement of the Switchers Support National Partnerships in Israel in the past years. Since its beginning, the program has achieved a lot:

-19 Certified local trainers were capacitated to provide the training following the SwitchMed methodology.
– 13 Business Support Organizations became members of the Support National Partnership
– 7 calls for applications of the Green Entrepreneurship programme were launched and 191 candidates applied countrywide.
– 7 workshops of the Green Entrepreneurship programme have been delivered in the country with 103 participants (45% were women) of which 91 have been certificated.
– 8 innovative projects with environmental and social impacts were selected for incubation and 10 entrepreneurs (8 of them being women) had drafted their Green Business Plans during a  8-month incubation process.
– 16 entrepreneurs pitched their sustainable companies to a jury composed of 6 representatives of investing organizations during the elevator pitch event on January 30, 2023.

The importance of the Switchers Support National Partnerships in achieving a circular economy in Israel has been also acknowledged by Yair M. Sakov, Founder and Managing Director of the local partner Tel Aviv University Entrepreneurship center: “SwitchMed is a well-designed program which enabled Tel Aviv University Entrepreneurship Center to educate and proliferate the green and circular economy mindset and principle in Israel. We enjoyed working with the SwitchMed management team and gained from their professional guidance. As a result, we were able to establish a Green Ecosystem in Israel including organizations which took upon themselves to train businesses with the program’s content and business owners and entrepreneurs who are embedding these principles in their way of doing business”. 

The great added value of the SwitchMed programme has also been underlined by the entrepreneurs themselves, such as Mrs. Alona Ron-Sni, founder of FILIT and who benefited from the incubation process by the BSO Haiffa Innovation Lab: “Thanks to this program, a new world opened up for me: I learned to evaluate the impact of my actions, which is, I think, the added value of the program. I also had the honor of representing Israel at SwitchMed Connect 2022 in Rimini, where I realized the importance of regional cooperation. I think we need to do more in this direction – as we are all facing the same challenges”.

Entrepreneurs who participated in the “Green Business Management training” focusing on Blue Economy also underlined the benefits of the programme, such as Dr. Talmon Alexandri, founder of SILENTIA: “My participation to the SwitchMed workshop helped me focus on my research objective, broadening my view of the business and stakeholder aspects of my initiative, rather than just focusing on the scientific aspects. For me, SwitchMed was an “open door” to the world of the blue economy”.

The project’s valuable results and achievements were possible thanks to the high involvement of green entrepreneurs in the program, as well as the local partner Entrepreneurship Center of Tel Aviv University and MedWaves, whose expertise developed under SwitchMed was used.