Cohort 1 featured Local Hubs all over the world taking place four times throughout the year, and it’s safe to say that they were a resounding success. Fellows came together in cities all over the world to create autonomous communities in Bangalore, Barcelona, Berlin, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, London, Mumbai, New Delhi, Pretoria, Stuttgart and Warsaw.

These Hubs consist of physical gathering points, organized by our Fellows, to connect with each other, mentors, and industry experts to take their learning offline and in person, to deepen learning, leadership and impact. Unlike our Regional Summits and Global Summit, the Local Hubs are almost completely Fellow-run. They decide on their teams, the location of the Hub, how their budding community expresses itself and how each event will be created by the Fellows themselves. They are assigned a budget and have autonomy on how they spend it to organize each Hub.

We are so grateful and inspired by the Fellows who stepped forward to organize their own Local Hubs. They came together to co-create and brought four great events on throughout the world. We asked the Fellows from each Hub to reflect on the past year as they’ve undergone the beVisioneers journey together. Check out some of the amazing responses:

Bangalore Local Hub

“Through this fellowship, I’ve met this amazing community of fellows, experts, coaches, mentors. I mean, this fellowship has opened doors for me that I wouldn’t have been able to step into in a million years. With the help of my venture coach, I’ve been able to pivot my project this wonderful path. You know, it’s it’s gaining. It’s gaining momentum. I also I mean, he also pushes and pushes me to think outside the box. He has pushed me to challenge myself, and I’m ever so grateful because because you get complacent. And when you get complacent, you don’t really tend to want to move, and you don’t really tend to want to go to the next stage because you’re comfortable. And I don’t ever think I want to be comfortable because what’s the fun? anyway, another thing I’m really grateful for was the Global summit. I mean, it was just three days of of so much learning, so much learning. I mean, learning about the other fellows, their projects, gathering insights from the getting feedback, meeting so many experts, who all were interested in what we had to say and were genuinely giving us feedback and, you know, telling us that they really liked our project.”

• Priya Srinivas, Banalore Local Hub Storyteller

Barcelona Local Hub

“I’m just super grateful to have found something like this. I think also there were a lot of things that I’ve learned in terms of, not only like in terms of venture, because first of all, I had zero ideas about venture building. I was super new to everything but also like in terms of leadership or even like environmental sustainability and maybe environmental literacy. I felt like I was really improving myself. I think also and always when you say venture or like, company or startup, like there’s this idea of what it needs to be like grinding, hustling and all these things.But, now I came to know the importance of personal sustainability; like managing, burnouts and how to be a good leader, how to build a community like these sides that I have never really considered.”

• Aleyna Gültekin, Barcelona Local Hub Storyteller

Cape Town Local Hub

”Local Hubs further solidified my sense of belonging. Initially, I was unsure about their purpose, but attending my first hub meeting was enlightening. Meeting fellows from the Regional Summit face-to-face again brought hope and a feeling that this journey was far from over. I learned valuable skills in storytelling and organization, which have been instrumental in my project development.”

• Likhona Mkonto, Cape Town Local Hub Storyteller

Communications Ambassador

Marlene Mostert was tireless and exceptional in her work as Communication Ambassador; facilitating communications and liaising between the bV team and the Fellows.

”In my role as communications ambassador, it has been so beautiful to see how we, together, have been actively building a thriving community that supports and uplifts each other generously. It is a gift to be in this together, during the high and lows in our growth journey to planet-positive success!”

Marlene Mostert, Cohort 1 Fellow

Bangalore Local Hub

Barcelona Local Hub

Berlin Local Hub