Meet My Mama

 We are a startup in Paris that fights against waste talents of migrant women that set up their company in the food industry in working-class area, whether they are refugee or immigrant  Our solution exists to give the tools to live autonomously when they decide to follow the path of entrepreneurship. We created an empowering program where they can be inspired, trained and supported asa they decide that they want to become chef, caterer and entrepreneur. Its possible through the Mama’s App

Our solution can positively change live to billion of women as it can be used through a phone and because of the simpleness of the solution Meet My Mama intends to have an impact on the whole society because investing in women it is not only matter of human rights and social justice but also one of 'smart economy', that allows to benefit from their talent and resourcefulness.

In working-class areas all over France, 120 million of women from a migrant background struggle and fail in entrepreneurship, and especially in the food industry. When only 30% of women in France set up their own company, they face many other obstacles : lack of network, illiteracy, lack of digital skills, loneliness, low socioeconomic status, language barriers, non recognition of diplomas and professional experience, gender stereotyping with 90% of the chefs in the culinary world that are men. That is why Meet My Mama is working to make the food industry and the society more inclusive and sustainable by setting up a framework which enable each woman to live from her culinary talent. By focusing on women empowerment.

Meet My Mama has for aim to empower migrant women to setup and conduct their own business in the catering industry :

A community of women in order to break up the social exclusion. We organize various events where women can be inspired. 

An empowerment program based on various and qualitative professional trainings linked to food industry. The program takes into account the main needs and issues women are facing up. The program is tailored to meet individual mamas’ requirements.

An administrative and legal support to face up boundaries encountered by women. This support is a key to prevent dropping out of professional trainings and improve the impact of our project.

Working opportunities in the catering industry through  a digital platform to help women to create and manage their own business. We believe that new technologies can contribute to boost female entrepreneurship so tackling barriers to digital inclusion faced by women is a real challenge.

In this App, the Mama 

• are trained through the Mama Academy and the MOOC to become chef, entrepreneur and independent

• find the network that they need to conduct their catering company

• have the business opportunities and accept them or not

Our solution serve 300 migrant women that live in low income areas in France. They are refugees, immigrant, French. They are 18 to 65. They have passion for food, values, lack of confidence, low digital skills, low socioeconomic status, language barriers, non recognition of diplomas and professional experience, gender stereotyping with 90% of the chefs in the culinary sector that are men. 

To understand their needs, we focused on their problem and we made interview to understand them and understand how the mechanism of isolation was made when they set up their company. Through interviews we listen to them and try to find solutions that make realize that they are not alone to overcome obstacles. 

Our Mamas, are directly engage in the development : they test the functionalities of the App, they give us their feedback when they are trained through the Mama Academy, they are involved when we organise inspirational events

The solution that we created address their needs as it is a broad empowering program that begin with the beginning : the inspiration part where you have to create a click in their mind that they can do it, until the connection to start having a business opportunity!

We enable migrant women in low working areas to enter peacefully in the entrepreneurship world with an App to be trained, to access a network of professional specialized when it comes to set up a company and a community  to support them. In order to prepare them to the uncertain entrepreneurship world, our Mamas have the opportunity after being trained to become chef, caterer and entrepreneur, to enter into our business platform and have business opportunities with our network of companies. They are equipped with a technology : the Mama’s App to develop their soft and hard skills.

Our solution is innovative for many reasons :

• In France, and especially in Paris, we can find some other organizations that work for refugees : les Cuistots Migrateurs, le Recho, are some examples. They work with similar beneficiaries, and focus on integration with a job.

The difference between this way of approaching employability with refugees and what we are doing with Meet My Mama is way different. We are in a broader approach, and we want to empower them : integration with a job is a part of a processus, not the end. We start with inspiration to create some clicks in their mind, then we train them with the Mama Academy, we support them with various services to make them autonomous and independent and we create business opportunities for them. And all of that is possible thanks to an App with a UX that is easy to use. Empowerment is for us the key to make them realize how entrepreneurship when supported is the key for accomplishment. 

• Our Mama Academy is the first school that gives you the tools to become chef, entrepreneur and a responsible Mama.Entrepreneurship is not easy, and there is no practical school that gives you the opportunity to be trained at the beginning of your project, during and after the company is setted up. You are never alone and always surrounded by a community

The technology that powers our solution is an App, the Mama’s App. It gives the opportunity for a Mama to have in her phone everything to become an independent and confident entrepreneur in the food industry.

In this App, the Mama have the opportunity to connect though her phone, she can download all the information about her profile, she can be trained and follow the courses of the Mama Academy to develop her skills, she can see all the business opportunities in the catering that we created for her with our business partners and can accept or not whether she wants to do it, and finally she can follow all of the path of her company through it : messages from our team, administrative folders, invoices, recipes and so on. It is a revolutionary App that facilitate all of her entrepreneurship life.

The Mama is trained to use it through digital courses and she is also asking for amelioration of the App.

The App is used by all of our community of Mamas through the catering platform. Today, the 50 women that work with us in the platform use this App. It allow us to follow their path in our empowering program and give them what they need for they catering company. Before that, the Mamas and us used WhatsApp for the orders, now they have everything on their phone :)

The App is on the App Store exclusively for the Mamas for now.

Please find a video that explains everything : 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KlJgFeZ3pNWKVRkMNzXU1JX27TngH3rz/view?usp=sharing

Our goal : Valorize culinary talents of migrant women

Activites / Services :

MMM : a platform that proposes to company culinary experiences made by the Mamas

Non profit organization : an ecosystem that provide to women all the tools to live by their passion of catering through an empowering program

Our vision in less than one year : Creating through an App the perfect empowering program to make the Mamas autonomous when they set up their own company in the catering industry

- Beneficiaries :50 women that are chef and have a catering company in the platform and 300 women within the community

- Where : Paris

- Impact : Inspiration for the women, qualification through the Mama Academy, breaking the social inclusion, breaking the digital gap with numeric classes, impact for the companies, impact for the family of the women, self confidence for our Mamas, economic impact with a revenue for them, a professional status

Vision for the future in five years : transform THE FOOD INDUSTRY WHILE MAKING OUR SOCIETY MORE INCLUSIVE, sustainaBLE AND RESPONSIBLE. In the future, we want to create other empowering and training program in various food jobs

- Beneficiaries : 500 women in the platform and billion of women within our community thanks to the digital

- Where : France and all of European cities, Middle East and big cities in America. In 2021, we will be in Dubai because we will represent France in the Dubai Expo 2020

- Impact : Inspiration for the women, qualification through the Mama Academy, breaking the social inclusion, breaking the digital gap with numeric classes, impact for the companies, impact for the family of the women, self confidence for our Mamas, economic impact with a revenue for them, a professional status

The current number of people you’re serving :

- within our empowering program and through the Mama s App who are chef entrepreneur : 50 women

- within our community of Mamas online through Facebook Workplace where we publish articles, videos, and with whom we organize inspirational events : 300

- our companies network : 1000 

The number you’ll be serving in one year : 

- within our empowering program and through the Mama s App who are chef entrepreneur : 150 women

- within our community of Mamas online through Facebook Workplace where we publish articles, videos, and with whom we organize inspirational events : 100 00

- our companies network : 2000

 The number you’ll be serving in five years :

- within our empowering program and through the Mama s App who are chef entrepreneur : 1000 women

- within our community of Mamas online through Facebook Workplace where we publish articles, videos, and with whom we organize inspirational events : 100 000

- our companies network : 10 000

Our goal for next year :

- finalize the structuration of all of our processes in Paris in order to scale perfectly next year

- create others professional opportunities to increase the employability of the women that we follow

Within the next five years :

- scale up in other cities in France and in Europe / Middle East as we are part of Dubai Expo / USA

To do that, we need :

 - to raise funds

- hire the best team

- increase the training part

- finding more business opportunities for the Mama

- develop the App again and again

The impact that we want to have within those five years :

- increase the numbers of Mamas within our community and create some clicks in their minds

- increase the numbers of Mamas that want to work in the food industry as entrepreneur

- increase the business opportunities in this sector by signing more partnership with companies

The berries currently that could exist in order to accomplish our goals in the next year and in the next five years :

- in 2020 the COVID has bad consequences in the economic world, especially in the food and event industry. We hope that the economic crisis won't have bad consequences on the demand of company for catering.

- If we do not raise money or not enough

- if we do not find the best people who share our values to scale up our solution

- in 2020 the COVID has bad consequences in the economic world, especially in the food and event industry. We hope that the economic crisis won't have bad consequences on the demand of company for catering

--> we are conscious of the economic situation so even in this period, we are trying to be innovate and to find other economic opportunities to create jobs fo our Mamas. Also, we are not that worried about it. The market of food is full of opportunities, and people will always eat :)

- If we do not raise money or not enough : we have been auto sufficient since the beginning so even now we do not need to raise money. But we know that with more money, our impact will increase tremendously. We are now discussing with some family offices so we are in a good way of raising money by the end of the year

- if we do not find the best people who share our values to scale up our solution : we were lucky enough since the beginning and we thing that we will be lucky to find the best people.

If we count the two structures, we are now :

- 17 full time staff 

- Various contractors in the Mama Academy that train the Mamas

Describe your team’s skills, background, and experiences that uniquely position you and your team to deliver the solution and solve the problem.

First, we are three cofounders with complementary skills :

- Donia : Public Administration Degree at Sciences Po Paris,various experience in the public - private - and non profit sector with a lot of humanitarian work abroad and in France

- Loubna :Digital degree at Paris Dauphine, experience in the digital and IA sector

- Youssef : Business Administration and Marketing at Skema. He worked in the food industry and as a COO in a start up.

We all have different skills : public speaking, writing, strategy, analyze, operations. This chance gives us the opportunity to set up really quickly three years ago an MVP where we dit everything by ourselves without asking anyone

Now that we are growing, we recruit an amazing team that have our competencies with higher specialization

Partners that work with us to source the Mamas :

 SINGA, France Terre d’Asile, Elan interculturel, Mamas sans frontières, Arcat (groupe SOS).

Parners for the training :

- Abajad : French courses 

- La Ruche and Wlla : entrepreneurship

; Potel et Chabot : internship in the catering service

- Google :  digital 

- Individuals trainers : public speaking, English, media training, sport and so on

Financial partners :

- Carrefour 

- Entreprendre et plus

- Réseau entreprendre

- Accenture

- Hachette : we made a book together 

*Clients traiteurs du monde et réseau professionnel pour les mamas

Strategic partners :

• Pôle emploi

• CAF

• Régions 
  

• Ministère du travail 
  

• Ministère de l’éducation nationale et de la jeunesse

• Ministère de l’intérieur (direction générale des étrangers en France)

• Accenture: appui au développement d’une stratégie d’essaimage

We have a model hybrid with :

• an organization non profit for the support part for the Mamas : the community, the Mama Academy and all the services that we provide. We also provide employment opportunity and job training to the Mamas and then sells its products or services on the open market through the company

• a company with the catering platform through the App that gives the chance to the Mamas to get business opportunities. We have a CA of 1,1 million of euros last year

Our key customers : 

• big companies as BNP, Nike, LVMH institutions and international organizations as UNHCR, start-up, and so on… that want to discover a new way of catering, that want to have an impact within their company by choosing responsible caterer. 

Our key beneficiaries :

• our Mamas that want to become professional caterer and that do not know how to do it by themselves.

In order to provide this product, we develop an App, the Mama’s App where the Mama can follow their business opportunities.

As we have an hybrid model, here are our two strategies for our path to financial sustainability :

• for the company : we have been autonomous financially since the beginning with the sell of our product. Now, to go further, we want to raise funds through investment capital.

• for the non profit organization : we have donations and grants from institutional organizations and private foundations.

  We are planning to recruit a specialist of raising European and public funds, and someone who will mainly raise money through private foundations.

Applying to Solve MIT Challenge will be a unique opportunity for Meet My Mama :

• it will give us the chance to be part of an amazing network with more than  130  Solver that are like us solving a Global Challenge of the UN. When you create a entrepreneurial project, as we see with our Mamas : being supported is essential and is the key for success. Also, being surrounded by others projects will give us hope, physically and mentally, to continue solving our challenges, even in difficult times. We will also have the chance to go further in our impact by having partnerships.

• we will have also the opportunity to join a community of leaders committed to social impact. In France, we have the chance to collaborate with many brands. We see all the impact that a collaboration between a social start up and a corporate group can have : enlarging the impact and changing the mentality of the people that are in the economy today.

• We want to make our cause for the Mama universal, and applying to the Solve Challenge give us this chance to be known everything and to make resonate the voices of the Mamas :)

We would be really happy to have some help in those areas :

- business model : we are still looking for the best model for our hybrid model and we need advice to do the best choice to find autosufficiency

- funding and revenue model

- board members or advisors : it is always great to get some feedback about our strategy with professional

- marketing, media and exposure : the exposure is the key for us to make our solution for every women everywhere

institutional organizations as the United Nations, governments : they will help us make this problem a world wide problem, create debates on it, and let the voice of our Mamas resonate in all institution tribunes that exist

big companies for instance Johnson and Johnson - Microsoft - and so on that want to grow their impact. They could have the possibility to make in their organizational structure an official place for our Mamas : they could register Meet My Mama as a special caterer 

Foundations, especially those in Dubai as Dubai Cares for instead : we will be part of Dubai Expo 2021 and we need them to increase our impact in the region for women in Middle East

All the fondations that MIT Solve is partnership with as Caloueste Gulbenkian Foundation - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or BHP Foundation : we can help them with their beneficiaries and create special empowering program through entrepreneurship

other projects within the community of MIT Solve

This prize will give us the opportunity :

- to develop the options of our App

- to develop our empowering program and the Mama Academy through our MOOC online

- to make realize to all the women and girls in the world that they want to live by their passion for food is possible.Within our community, we want to celebrate them and make them realize that they have a gift for cooking and that is like gold