Over the course of over a year, GIMED has accompanied over 60 projects in Tunisia, including 90 entrepreneurs, with a high social and environmental impact from their business ideas and existing ventures through capacity building sessions, one-to-one coaching and pitching sessions. The main goal was to strengthen transversal knowledge and skills and facilitate access to market and access to finance. Among the participants, 20 were selected to access a grant of 7,500 euros for the development of their project. From this selection, a total of 4 business ideas and 2 existing ventures are the winners from this grant in Tunisia.

The Confederation of Citizen Enterprises of Tunisia, “CONECT” has been the partner providing the training and coaching services for young entrepreneurs, carried out within GIMED, the EU-funded project under the ENI CBC Med Programme. From these green and social entrepreneurs there are ideas in various fields such as: circular economy, reduction of the use of plastic and replacement with alternative materials, urban regeneration or sustainable tourism.

On Wednesday the 14th September GIMED celebrated a pitching event for 12 start-ups in ideation stage and 8 start-ups in growth stage that completed capacity building workshops and their coaching.

The selection of the winners was made by a Jury composed of external multidisciplinary experts, who evaluated them on the basis of the path followed, the growth prospects and the potential for developing future synergies. The winners will have 6 months to use the received funds, under the supervision of CONECT.

The winning business ideas and existing ventures are:

Winners of the business ideas category:

• RIBLUM: this project works with wood obtained without touching a tree, a high quality wood from palm waste. This material can be used for decoration and construction.
• CAMINOVA: it helps agri-food industries and pharmaceuticals to improve quality of life by using cameline gelatin as an alternative to standard gelatin.
• SOLVIVO: the project consists in identifying strains (bacteria and funghi) well adapted to soils and climate change to multiply them under appropriate conditions and make them available after conditioning to customers for agricultural and forestry use as fertilizers.
• Graines de bonheur :  it is translated as “Seeds of happiness”. Seeds of happiness is a vegetable nursery located in Tabarka specialized in the production and sale of vegetable plants of local resistant varieties and peasant seeds. They have a service of installation of vegetable gardens in urban areas.

Winners of the existing ventures category:

• Vitavie : it's a center for the valorization of wool and the learning of rural women in the production of wool articles and in the hygiene of life in the North West of Tunisia. 
• MONSAPO :  it is a greentech start-up that aims to recycle used vegetable oils and wood ash by using alkaline materials and other ingredients to transform them into environmentally friendly, efficient, economical and natural ready-to-use products, and thus marketable.