Majd Khalifeh, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Flow Accelerator, the implementing partner of the EU-funded Green Forward programme in Palestine, shares how the initiative is helping embed green and circular economy practices across the entrepreneurial ecosystem. She reflects on the importance of supporting Business Support Organizations, driving long-term systemic change, and inspiring young entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into sustainable ventures.

• What role does Flow Accelerator play in supporting entrepreneurs in Palestine, and how has Green Forward helped strengthen that mission? 

Flow Accelerator exists to turn ideas into investment-ready companies. We work shoulder to shoulder with founders on their model, their team, and their path to capital, across the full journey from ideation through acceleration. Green Forward advances this mission on two fronts at once. It works one level up in the ecosystem, where its direct beneficiaries are the Business Support Organizations, the incubators, accelerators, and enablers that entrepreneurs across Palestine rely on. We enable these BSOs to embed green and circular economy thinking into how they support businesses, through the Green Business Toolkit we place in their hands, the capacity we build with them, and the Working Group we lead to drive policy action for Palestine’s green and circular economy. At the same time, Green Forward levels up Flow itself: as an accelerator, we are advancing our own venture-building practice in the green and circular space, so sustainability is engineered into how we grow companies from the first stage. When we enable the organizations that serve founders and raise our own standard alongside them, the impact compounds and reaches far more entrepreneurs than any single programme ever could.

• What impact has the support provided through Flow Accelerator had on young entrepreneurs, and what achievements make you most proud?

Our impact lives in two layers. Directly, we turn early concepts into operating companies, open financing doors that were closed to founders before, and give them a community that takes them seriously. But the achievement we are proudest of in Green Forward is the multiplier we create by enabling the BSOs rather than only backing individual startups and businesses. When we equip a support organization with green and circular tools and the capacity to use them, those practices travel to every founder in that organization’s pipeline so one toolkit and one strengthened BSO reach dozens of entrepreneurs we never meet directly. We are not serving a single cohort; we are upgrading the entire ecosystem’s ability to build sustainably. Watching green and circular thinking become part of how Palestinian businesses are designed and sustaining that under conditions that would stop most ecosystems in their tracks is exactly the kind of lasting change we set out to create. 

• What advice would you give to young people who have an idea for a business but are unsure where to start?

Start before you feel ready. The idea in your head is only a hypothesis until you put it in front of a real customer, so talk to people, test small, and let what you learn reshape the plan. Do not wait for perfect conditions or perfect funding; the strongest founders build with whatever they have in front of them. Surround yourself with mentors, peers, and a community that believes in what you are building, because the right conversation at the right moment saves you a year. And build with sustainability in mind from day one,  it is not a constraint, it is what makes a business durable.

To the Business Support Organizations : you are the multipliers of this ecosystem. The green and circular transition will not be carried by individual startups alone. It moves through you, into every founder you touch. Treat green thinking as core infrastructure, not an add-on; put the tools to work, build the internal capacity to use them, and stay at the policy table where the rules of this economy are being written. When you raise your standard, an entire generation of entrepreneurs rises with you.