A competition to create new job opportunities
As the unemployment rate rises, the European Commission launches a call for ideas to create new job opportunities through social innovation projects.
di Staff
Finding new solutions to help people move towards new types of work. This is the challenge that was launched on 1 October by the European Commission, in memory of Diogo Vasconcelos, founding chair of the Social Innovation eXchange initiative and chair of the Business Panel on Future EU Innovation Policy,which called for a radical change in European innovation policies.
The competition is open to anyone who is legally established or resident in the EU member states, (including individuals, organisations or unconstituted groups) and who is interested in developing new job opportunities for other Europeans. The shortlisted candidates will be offered a strong mentoring component and the three best proposals will eventually be awarded with a prize of 20 thousand euros in May 2013. The project ideas can come from all sources and sectors and all types of organisations including for-profit, non-for-profit, or private companies and a second prize competition will be launched in 2014.
Over 25 million people in Europe are out of work while many others are stuck in low-paid jobs or sense that they have few opportunities on the job market – sometimes because of their gender, age or a handicap.
According the European Commission “Not doing anything about unemployment and under-employment is not just cruel and wasteful; the corrosive effects of high unemployment will cast a shadow over the economy and our society for years to come.” Unemployment is considered by the Commission one of the most urgent issues for social innovation to tackle. The competition also offers a definition of social innovation, as “innovations that are social in both their ends and their means – new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously meet social needs (more effectively than alternatives) and create new social relationships or collaborations. They are innovations that are not only good for society but also enhance society’s capacity to act. Social innovations take place across boundaries between the public sector, the private sector, the third sector and the household.”
The application deadline is 21 December.
