For the last six years, the European Social Innovation Competition has supported social innovators from across Europe. Previous winners have included an open source home building platform, a multimedia tool for blind people and a revolutionary peer-to-peer learning platform.
The 2018 edition will give away 200,000 € in prize money and has sought projects that empower young people in a changing economy. An expert panel has narrowed down an initial 729 entries, to 10 finalist projects. The three winners will be announced in an award ceremony in Brussels next week.
The 10 finalists for the EU Social Innovation Competition are:
Career Bus
Career Bus: an initiative that combines innovative technology and face to face interaction to give career orientation to young people living in rural areas. The team plans on kitting out a bus, to travel to remote areas in order to reach detached communities.
ConnecTech
ConnecTech: a team of tech professionals who have developed coding courses, internships and mentoring from tech professionals to young people with physical impairments in order to expand employment opportunities and promote flexible working conditions.
es im-perfect
es im-perfect: a food company that employs disadvantaged groups to make use of surplus farm production that would otherwise go to waste. A proportion of the produce is distributed to food banks, the rest is processed into jams and Pâtés.
GoFundEd
GoFundEd: the Ukraine’s first online crowdfunding platform specifically dedicated to the education system. The initiative enables students and teachers raise funds to carry out much-needed school improvements.
Heritage Lab
Heritage Lab: an initiative that teaches innovation incubation methods to young people in small towns and supporting them to launch new businesses and services based on local cultural heritage.
imagiLabs
imagiLabs: a tech start-up that introduces teenage girls to the tech field by providing them with a platform to develop their programming skills by means of fun practical projects such as customising mobile phone cases.
MTOP goes digital
MTOP goes digital: a project that combines offline and online engagement to prepare young qualified refugees to enter the Austrian labour market. It then connects them with Austrian and multinational companies.
REvive Greece
REvive Greece: an educational programme that combines classroom and e-learning methods to re-skill young unemployed Greeks and refugees in computer programming. It then connects them with companies in the IT sector.
ScOLARgeno
ScOLARgeno: a project that empowers school students to act against climate change by supporting them to establish cooperatives to plan and operate their own school-based photovoltaic energy generating systems.
Ulisse
Ulisse: Europe’s first digital platform that creates, markets & promotes local travel experiences and full holiday bundles designed by deaf people for deaf people. By doing so, it also fosters international sign language education.
The competition winners will be announced on Thursday 8 November. Keep up to date with the winners by following the competition’s twitter channel and by subscribing to the email list.
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