Grow Remote, a community project intended to increase employment opportunities in regional areas by connecting remote workers with companies looking to hire, has secured €500,000 in funding.
The not-for-profit, which started life as a WhatsApp group in 2018, now has over 60 local chapters across the State and 10,000 members. It has also expanded beyond these shores with projects in countries such as the US and Scotland.
Among the companies to use the platform to hire workers are Xerox, Lenovo, Shopify, Bredog, Glofox, Red Hat and GitHub.
The organisation said it has secured €500,000 from the Regional Enterprise Development Fund with matched funding coming from Social Entrepreneurs Ireland and the Western Development Commission.
Grow Remote said it intends to use the funds to hire staff and that it expects to seek further funding in the near future.
"We'll absolutely be raising more as we go. We have a big ambition to change how employment spreads across Ireland and will need a healthy budget to achieve that. It will most likely come from trading income, EU funds and corporate sponsorships," said Tracy Keogh, one of Grow Remote's co-founders and an innovation community manager for Bank of Ireland.
Grow Remote is one of 26 applicants to have been awarded funding of over €40 million on Wednesday from the Regional Enterprise Development Fund, which is managed by Enterprise Ireland.
