Our founder (Leyla Karaha) was working on her fintech microfinance social enterprise idea in 2019 and found the journey to be very lonely. She wanted to meet, connect and learn from other social entrepreneurs who are on the same journey but there were only one or two events that were open to the public in her town (Dublin, Ireland). This motivated her to host her first networking event for social entrepreneurs at the Startup Week Dublin in October 2019. Over 120 signed up for the event and almost 80 people attended the networking event.

She had so much fun and learned a lot as this was her first time ever to organise an event. The icing on the cake for her was when some of the attendees told her that this was their first time hearing about social entrepreneurship and they had a ‘lightbulb moment’ .When the lockdown started in March 2020, we had to cancel our April event. In May, we pivoted and moved our networking events online and aimed to reach a global audience.

We have been hosting monthly global online networking events since May. One of YourY Network’s aims is to help raise public awareness of social entrepreneurship. We highlight and celebrate the work of amazing social entrepreneurs from all over the world. We connect like-minded people from different parts of the world. Diversity, inclusion, and equality are our core values, we celebrate these in each of our events. We hope to be the biggest global community of social entrepreneurs and changemakers.