There is a lack of young mentors, especially girls, who can support communities to achieve their entrepreneurial goals. A mentor needs to have business knowledge, and an eye and skills for talent development and personal coaching. It will be challenging to attract mentors and make them engage with youngsters. By setting up a Training of Trainers service senior mentors can train youngsters. In this way young mentors can give support to others to get trust from their communities, experience, support, confidence, social capital and access to information.

The Hubs can be located on a fairly long distance from the community, which makes it challenging for young girls to reach it by means of safe, appropriate and affordable transportation. Gender-based violence and sexual harassment is unfortunately common and generally accepted. Also the lack of well-maintained roads, unpredictable security situations, and concerns of families’ views on the primary domestic responsibilities for girls makes safe mobility a challenge.

Instead of having an overload of tools that can help in bringing innovation in setting up and running an enterprise, it would be helpful to have real time experience of innovative tools and solutions. Also, youngsters need to adhere to rules and regulations when setting up an enterprise, so this should be learned through local resources.

It is important that the Hubs will become a learning space for young entrepreneurs. Therefore there is the need for tools to create an entrepreneurship community, something that is still relatively new in Pakistan. A great level of ownership will engage the community more actively, and encourage them to become self-sustainable.

Rizwaan Khambata is a development professional who believes that youth entrepreneurship and employment are the keys to sustainable development. His primary interest is strengthening ecosystems that engage and support youth to effect change in their communities as they see fit. He has experience in creating strategies for communication and fundraising for NGOs, and researching business and impact models for Hubs and civic spaces. He co-founded the Young Entrepreneurs Project in Afghanistan. Rizwaan holds a Master in Public Administration from Leiden University in The Netherlands, and a bachelor in Economics and Business Administration from Truman State University, USA. He is currently lives in Tanzania.

Nimesh Ghimire has been involved in experimenting with – and learning from – grassroots engagement and innovation models. He co-led the design and implementation of two Innovation Labs in rural Nepal. Nimseh is a member of the British Council’s Global Changemakers network, and worked as part of World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Next Generation. In 2009 he was selected as one of Asia-Pacific’s 100 most promising young social entrepreneurs. He currently lives in Washington DC and works at Ashoka, a global organization that invests in world’s leading social entrepreneurs.

Marc de Klerk is a small business, organisation, and entrepreneurship development consultant. He worked in various sectors, including renewable energy, food processing, IT, sustainable tourism and the cultural industry. He managed the Enterprise Development programme which was implemented in 5 countries. The programme included business plan competitions, training courses, BDS development and delivery, and direct access to financing. Marc graduated at Utrecht University in International Economist and Economic Geographer and specialized in international organizational theory and development. He is currently part of Innovation Star at Oxfam Novib.