Entrepreneurs

There is no other bank like Barclays for the people who create and build businesses; our support for the entrepreneurial community goes beyond funding solutions, and includes expert advice and mentoring, leading insights, as well as access to essential networks. This commitment forms part of Barclays’ Citizenship agenda, and permeates across the group, from grass roots skills provision to product and thought leadership perspectives.

Barclays has a rich history, spanning more than three centuries, in supporting and driving innovation. Each year we support over 100,000 start-ups with nearly a third of these going on to export in their first 12 months of business. We have a relentless focus on pioneering innovation, and a commitment to fostering the emergence of new business and technologies today.

Barclays’ holistic approach is helping to establish a long-term pipeline of high growth businesses, ultimately driving job creation and economic growth at a local and national level. Since 2012, Barclays employees have volunteered more than 18,700 (18,710) hours to help deliver enterprise skills training in the communities in which we operate.

Our offering is uniquely based on our ability to help businesses no matter how large they grow, and our understanding of and support for the individuals behind them. Using our expertise to support progress in this way can make a powerful difference, and as such Barclays aims to be the partner of choice for people and organizations seeking to address social and economic challenges.

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Videos from this campaign

Content from this campaign

Sustainable Development Goals

Unreasonable Impact | Changing the Way the World Grows Food: Q&A with Agrivi
Of the 570 million farms worldwide, 90 percent are run by individuals or by a family and rely on family labor for operations. For these small-scale farmers, the greatest obstacle to productivity and profit is often a lack of access to basic knowledge about best practices.

Sustainable Development Goals

Unreasonable Impact | Water Scarcity, Micro-Entrepreneurship, and War: Q&A with Desolenator
Among the many crises bearing down on our collective horizon, perhaps none is so uniquely threatening to populations worldwide as that of water scarcity. Tomorrow morning, more than one billion people will wake up without access to clean water, a number that is only expected to quadruple by 2030.

Innovation & Technology

Barclays’ Mark Thain Shares Insights on the Role of Social Innovation in Business
Before joining Barclays’ Citizenship team in 2009, Mark had extensive experience in project finance, as such, he was responsible for strategy, finance and impact evaluation across Barclays’ global portfolio of community partnerships.

Sustainable Finance & Socially Responsible Investment

Barclays is Helping Unleash the Green Economy in Asia
Barclays partnership with Unreasonable Group, ‘Unreasonable Impact’, is launching its global work in Singapore, rapidly scaling up selected entrepreneurs and helping them to create thousands of new jobs while addressing key environmental issues.

Responsible Production & Consumption

Unreasonable Impact: Reinventing Luxury With Reclaimed Materials: Q&A With Elvis & Kresse
Today, the amount of solid waste generated in urban areas and developing economies has overtaken other pollutants, including greenhouse gases. Single-use plastics outnumber fish in our oceans, and landfills tower over neighborhoods in the world’s megacities.

Environment

Unreasonable Impact: Real-Time, Local Air Quality Data At Your Fingertips: Q&A With BreezoMeter
The average adult breathes 3,000 gallons of air every day. But in some areas of the world, this essential human function could prove to be lethal. According to the World Bank, air pollution now ranks as the deadliest form of pollution, and approximately 90 percent of the world lives in places that fall short of the World Health Organization’s air quality standards.

Responsible Production & Consumption

Unreasonable Impact: The Most Responsible Fabric on the Planet: Q&A With Thread
Thread is bringing transparency and fair treatment back into apparel by producing fabrics transformed from plastic bottles found in the streets of some of the poorest communities on the planet.

Energy

Unreasonable Impact: The Power to Transform 100 Million Lives by 2020: Q&A with d.light
Energy is essential to generate a livelihood and improve quality of life. Over one billion people around the world, though, continue to live without access to electricity, the majority of them in Africa and Asia. According to the World Bank, nearly another three billion people rely on wood or other biomass for cooking and heating, which produces air pollution that causes millions of deaths every year.

Responsible Production & Consumption

Unreasonable Impact: Crickets Could Solve Global Protein Scarcity: Q&A with Bitty Foods
One in nine people still go to bed hungry every night. Because of rapid population growth, the demand for livestock is expected to more than double by 2050, making it increasingly difficult to supply enough protein to nourish everyone. This pressure on the planet also amplifies greenhouse gas emissions and water scarcity. We have no choice but to discover alternative ways to feed people.

Environment

Unreasonable Impact: Recycling Carbon From a Liability to an Opportunity: Q&A With LanzaTech
According to NASA, current carbon dioxide levels in the air are at their highest in the past 650,000 years. With a growing demand for energy coupled with unprecedented emissions of this greenhouse gas, we’re trending toward a precarious future.

More from Barclays

  1. Access to financing
    We will continue to create access to funding solutions and small business financing. We will also continue to support our Green Bond Treasury...

  2. Access to employment
    We will help people gain access to vital skills they need to get into work and support entrepreneurs to scale businesses and create employment...

  3. Entrepreneurs
    There is no other bank like Barclays for the people who create and build businesses; our support for the entrepreneurial community goes beyond funding...

  4. Access to financial and digital empowerment
    We will improve access to financial services, including developing targeted products and services for individuals and small businesses. We will also...