Be Your Change Media

Be your change is a media platform focused on podcasting and available via a mobile app.

It offers original and curated content about female changemakers who have launched initiatives in the areas of:

• Social and environmental awareness
• Empowering communities under-represented in traditional media 

We identify existing valuable initiatives and contents, making it easily available to inspire our audience in taking actions

We have chosen to focus on audio podcasting for its strong advantages:

• Easily accessible (no need of high-speed connexion; no need to master reading);
• Fit with the behavioral trends (listening in the move);
• Low production costs 

We position Be your change as an alternative to:

• Mainstream media, broadly owned, produced and operated by men. 
• Generalist podcasting platforms (ie ITunes, Spotify…) which result difficult in identifying relevant thematic content.

This mobile app would help accelerate the impact of changemaker globally by amplifying their work and help connect the ecosystem.

Mainstream media strongly lack diversity of voices and ownership. In the U.S alone, the news network is owned by 15 male billionaires. Less than 5% of the content we consume is produced by women. Less than 9% of Female own a broadcast & TV network. Despite the growing success of podcasting, only 10% of the Top 200 podcasts on Apple Charts are produced and hosted by women. It creates an unbalanced media ecosystem where different voices get less visibility, and a tendency to focus on negative stories. As a result, the audience might feel hopeless to help solve global issues.  

However, many women are leading the way in improving their communities and showing positive outcomes. Raising awareness of many innovative initiatives, among them many projects (businesses, nonprofit, communities…) led by women can make a difference. Furthermore, these initiatives often remain local, and lack the visibility that could inspire and empower people and give these women a real role model position.

Be your change aims at making female changemakers visible and allow the audience to adopt / imitate / emulate their initiatives.With Be Your Change, we have decided to focus on positive solutions to social issues promoting hope.  

Our core focus goes on women. We identify female changemakers and provide them with:

• Visibility
• Community
• Resources
• Empowerment (podcast / media platform)

We are serving a community of female change makers in needs of:

• promoting their work (companies, non-profits) to get exposure, amplify their work and growth faster
• connecting with other female change makers to develop the network they need to develop partnerships
• getting access to the resources they need like pitching opportunities, competition, incubators, investors
• getting access to training to create their own podcasts and use their own voice to promote their work

Our solution is a curated mobile podcasting app to promote female change makers with:

Content

• Original content: currently working on second season of Be Your Change podcast featuring women in media, fair trade, music, art, and zero waste 
• Existing podcasts produced by women and provide solution based information about critical topics e.g refugees crisis, zero waste, environment
• Existing articles that covers solutions based with an emphasis on highlighting diversity of voices and background

Resources: 

• Podcasting: How to launch your podcast for female changemakers
• Competition, Call for Application, Grants available, Mentorship opportunities
• Community: Connect with other members on the app

Podcasting technology has historically been developed by males. There are almost no podcasting technology platform created and funded by women. 

• Having a single-sided approach to product development perpetuate bias in how the world is portrayed in general. 
• Women have traditionally a holistic approach to life because they juggle many differents roles are raised to care for others. 

Our technology platform focus on content curation. Traditional podcasting app can make it difficult to navigate to find relevant interests. We do the heavy lifting of selecting podcasts that are relevant to our mission to help develop a sustainable planet. And in doing so, we inspire others to either strengthen their changemakers skills and hopefully start their own podcast. 

We believe no other podcasting platforms have developed this model yet except for network platform but rarely with a focus on a vertical.

It helps affects users to discover and consume content that is meaningful to them participate in bringing different voices to the spotlights. By doing so, and engaging the community with the possibility to connect, meet virtually, and share knowledge with a fostering a community of female changers that is valuable to advertisers and institutional partners. 

Our solution will use the streaming technology. Our app will first be developed on Android.  

Many women we have talked to are very eager to hear about this solution. Many of them are working very hard to improve society but do not get enough visibility in particular when they are early stage. 

Building a community around role models that are offering actual / existing / duplicable solutions for today, as opposite to highly technologically innovative projects for maybe tomorrow or in ten years).

• Concretely demonstrate the ability of women to make a real difference, including in the media industry i.e. not claiming, not advocating, just making.
• Offering tools for the audience to produce their own content, thus controlling their storytelling.

Platform functionalities

• Editorialized content
• Search engine
• Share / Social networks
• Contact the women featured in our original content for partnership or mentoring

Outputs: 

• More visibility for women's initiatives which will result increase media and partnership opportunities 
• Supportive communities to become everyone's champion
• Dissemination of interesting ideas based on community expertise
• Community building events

Short Term Outcomes

• Social connection with like minded individuals
• Increased ideas circulation

Medium Term Outcomes

• Less isolated
• More resources available to women though community knowledge

Long Term Outcomes

• More opportunities & Visibility
• Acceleration of social impact on targeted communities

• We are currently serving a population of 300 female changemakers via newsletter, podcasts interviews, and networking events. Our audience is about 5000 listeners. 
• In one year, 1000 female changemakers
• In 5 years; 10 of thousands of female changemakers. 

Goals for the next year are to:

• generate revenue through sponsorship, affiliation program
• continue to establish the brand and reach a wider audience of female change makers through partnerships. 

In the next five years, 

• Develop a podcast network solely focused on female change makers talking about critical topics such as environment, education, inclusion. 
• Build an e-commerce part of the business with a focus on developing audio gears targeted at women
• Develop workshops to bring all the change makers together
• Have an awesome diverse team
• Have a sustainable business
• In 5 years, create a media investment fund dedicated to accelerate women media companies. 

The current barriers are 

• Access to technical mentors and right team of advisors
• Access to grants or pre-seed investment
• Develop an MVP of the mobile app
• Recruit co-founder 

• Currently finishing an incubator program with bridge for billions and applying for a pre-accelerator. 
• Networking and talking to potential advisors. 
• Applying for grants and pitching competition. 
• Planning a crowdfunding campaign in Q4

The team working

• 1 full time
• 3 contractors (journalists, brand designer, web design)

Our team operates at the intersection of tech, media, entertainment and women issues and has a global experience. 

Our founder has have 15 years of global experience working in the entertainment, music, and podcasting industry with and expertise in BD and partnerships, content production, branded content and events management and run a podcasting business unit with more than 5000 + content producers in San Francisco and headed business development for Spreaker, an European podcasting app. 

Barbara Gorrand has worked as an investigative bilingual journalist for over 15 years, writing for L’Indépendant (France) then for La Liberté (Canada), where her work on Indigenous People has gained her two national awards.For the past two years she has been a reporter for CBC - Radio Canada, focusing on storytelling and podcasts.She is now working on a documentary about the new faces of natural winemaking in the South of France.

Elisabeth Speno is a product/graphic designer with more than 15 years of experience in design with a passion for the environment and social issues. Some of her latest work include working with women in jail to teach them how to create their own magazine to shed positive lights on their stories. 

• Partnership with women-led companies including Neococo, Fair trade L.A. We partner by recording interviews of founders to offer visibility and promote their work. In return, we get mention in on their social media feed. We receive invitations to attend professional events. 
• We are currently discussing partnership with podcast platforms to provide visibility to our content.

• Affiliation: Affiliation revenue based on companies, softwares and products featured on the platform
• Sponsorship program: on boarding early stage sponsor to access a community of female change makers
• E-commerce
• Content co-production
• Membership

Our main focus towards the end of the year is to secure 

• $50k in grants, 
• $25K in sponsorship
• $5K from affiliation program

To achieve this, we are working at growing significantly our audience and reach. Our goal is to reach an audience of 250 000 over the next 18 months. This would bring significant advertising revenue that would enable us to sustain our company. 

We’re excited about being part of a peer network with organizations who are doing exciting work to accelerate our learning curves, gain support and advices and contribute to the community. 

Through Solve’s global network, we want to 

• access technology expert
• discover female changemakers and solutions to feature on our app and podcast 
• find institutional partners and potential sponsors who might interested in becoming partners of our product and help us accelerate our growth
• broaden our network in the U.S and internationally
• build community of like-minded individuals and partners

Solve's connections  and expertise will propel us on a different path and we are exciting to share this knowledge to other female changemakers. 

• Institutions: Discuss with institutions to develop their podcast, and have them as sponsors and/or partners of the podcasters and grant funding. 
• Brand: Patagonia, get their help with marketing to promote podcast related to women working in environment, sponsor
• Participant media: co-production mentorship around film media development
• MIT: Develop partnership around development of technology products, visibility, and access to other women female changemakers in their network. 

Our team will use the prize to 

• Develop the mobile podcasting app Be Your Change
• Improve the website www.beyourchange.co
• Hire SEO specialist to increase traffic 
• Cover some of the wages cost (journalists)
• Produce a podcast series on the positive impact of land restoration project led by women