On November the 4th the final event of the 2019 European Social Innovation Award took place where between the nominated finalist three €50,000 prizes were announced by the European Commission for the most innovative projects designed to reduce plastic waste.
Following the pitches of the finalists, MiWA, SpraySafe and Venvirotech were announced as winners of the 2019 award based on the expert jury’s evaluation.
Browse through all selected entries of the 2019 Social Innovation Award here: https://eusic.challenges.org/semi-finalists/
As a specific spotlight of the event, the 2018 impact prize winner was also awarded, please read the report with Lisa-Maria Sommer (https://mtop.at/) here: https://eusic.challenges.org/2019/11/04/mtop-2019-impact-prize-winner/
Furthermore as a legacy of the previous editions of the award, the Alumni network was launched during the festive event: https://alumni-network.challenges.org/
In this nostalgic vibe we remembered the participation of semi finalists on our annual summit – Open Living Lab Days.
Please read our short summary of the #EUSIC2019 activities in Thessaloniki, Greece below:
Social Innovation and the Living Lab Community: Learn and Play with the EUSIC Semi-Finalists
In the occasion of the Open Living Lab Days 2019, the annual Summit of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), held in Thessaloniki, Greece, from 3 to 6 September 2019, a series of activities have been developed to promote the work of the European Social Innovation Competition (EUSIC) team.
The Social Innovation Playbook where made available to anyone interested in knowing more about EUSIC in the Exhibition Area of the event. Furthermore, two of the Semi-Finalists of the EUSIC competition joined the event: FunPlastic Toys from Greece and ZeroWave from Bulgaria, who received support on how to prepare their pitching portfolio through a webinar prior to the event. A series of short clips where tailored collecting the key idea shared: these were made available on ENoLL’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RshB5e91nJ4.
On 5th September 2019, the Semi-Finalists of EUSIC pitched their projects in the Plenary Room of the event in front of a big audience of more than 500 people, and a panel of venture capitalist, formed by the following experts:
The Semi-Finalists received counselling and feedback from the panel on how to increase the market-readiness of their ideas. The award to the Best OLLD2019 Pitch was given to ZeroWave, who will join us again next year at the Open Living Lab Days 2020 in Ghent, Belgium.
2. ZeroWave receiving the Best Pitch Award
Authors: Clara Mafe, Francesca Spagnoli and Zsuzsanna Bodi