Yannick du Pont

Yannick du Pont is Director of SPARK, an international not-for-profit organization working on Youth Entrepreneurship and SME development in fifteen developing countries emerging from conflict in Africa, South-Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Through job creation, entrepreneurship promotion and the advocacy for an enabling business environment, SPARK aims to diminish the potential for conflict. SPARK gives special attention to youth, women and marginalised communities in its programming. Most activities gravitate around training & coaching (potential) entrepreneurs, reforming educational curricula to become more entrepreneurial and access to finance for the missing middle. SPARK has 14 offices with over a hundred staff in Kosovo, Serbia, Liberia, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Yemen, Mali, Myanmar, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria (from Turkey).  SPARK has founded an internationally accredited higher vocational business academy in Kosovo. Mr. Du Pont holds degrees in Political Science and Sociology and has been working with states in conflict and emerging from it since 1994. He is primarily responsible for programme development. He is also a board member of the Foundation Max van der Stoel (FMS), member of the advisory board of the Centre for Theory of Change in New York and sit on the steering committee of the Knowledge platform Security & Rule of Law. All these latter positions he fills ‘pro bono'”.