For Pakistan-focused non-profits and social businesses designing for scale

Friends of Pakistan Fellowship

Curating Pakistan's most promising non-profits and social businesses, and matching them with world-class strategy, mentoring, and capital to scale.

How to apply

Applications for the 2027 cohort open soon. Get notified

Why this fellowship

Pakistan has extraordinary leaders working on big social problems. Scale is the next frontier.

240 million people, 221 million of them living on less than $8 (PKR 2,200) a day. 26 million children out of school, the second most in the world. 1,000 children under five dying every day. 256,000 lives lost to air pollution each year, in the country with the world’s worst air. A generation of leaders has decided not to wait — and they are building real solutions, with real evidence, at real cost. But few reach national scale. Most stay caught in project-driven survival — securing grants, reaching thousands, when their models could reach millions. We are changing that.

What we mean by scale

A big idea is one that can scale. Scale means achieving exponential impact over and above the resources you put in.

From one village to a country.From thousands to millions.From a working pilot to a model the country runs on.

The Fellowship

Seven days to redesign for scale.

Each year, a small cohort of Pakistani leaders spends seven days in Northern Pakistan refining their model for scale. They leave with a sharper operating approach, an honest evidence plan, and a story funders trust. Fellows join the global Friends of Pakistan network of investors, philanthropists, and scaling non-profits and social businesses.

A Friends of Pakistan programme, with Mulago Foundation and Taleemabad.

About Friends of Pakistan

How to apply

What you get

A week that changes how you build.

Seven days, fully present
A residential retreat in Northern Pakistan. No email, just the work.
The Mulago scale framework
A global, best-in-class framework for scale, built on the Mulago Foundation’s approach.
Mentoring from proven leaders who have scaled
Clinics with foundations, academic experts, and practitioner faculty.
Demo Day
Your scale blueprint, in front of funders investing in Pakistan.

How it works

From application to Demo Day.

Apply
Conversation
Selection
The retreat
After

01
Apply
A focused written application: numbers, names, dates — about 25 minutes once you have gathered them.
02
Conversation
Shortlisted founders have one 45-minute conversation with the Friends of Pakistan Fellowship team.
03
Selection
Twelve organisations are selected, plus a small number of alternates.
04
The retreat
Seven days redesigning your model for scale, ending with Demo Day.
05
After
Ongoing mentorship and a peer network of Pakistan’s most ambitious founders.