Social Impact Award

Overview

• EDUCATION
• We provide the youth with the necessary input to found a social enterprise.
• In spring 2020, we conducted 150+ workshops & events reaching 5,100+ participants both in person and virtually.
• COMMUNITY
• We enable the youth to get feedback from experts and peers.
• In 2020, our ventures received 36,000+ votes online for our yearly Community Voting, and we gathered 300+ members of our community at our annual SIA Summit. We collaborate with 1,000+ partner organizations worldwide and have fostered 860+ alumni ventures.
• AWARENESS
• We create awareness around social entrepreneurship as a potential career.
• In 2020, we reached 2,500,000+ people online, and offered our program to 14 countries and 134 cities around the world
• SUPPORT
• We support the youth with know-how, incubation, and pre-seed funding.
• In 2020, we received 550+ applications to our incubation, in which 120 impact ventures took part. We awarded the 52 most impactful ventures.

OUR CORE BELIEFS AND THEORY OF CHANGE

We believe in the potential of students to make a difference. We build on the assumption and experience that a large majority of students wants to have a positive impact in society and has the talent and energy to do so.

We believe in the entrepreneurial process as an ideal means for students to unleash this potential. The path of developing a social venture helps students connect with their aspirations for a better society and their creative talent. It invites them to take an active role as citizens, get in touch with reality and to collaboratively articulate and test workable solutions to societal challenges. Joining this process in a supportive environment provides students with a potentially transformative learning experience: in tools, concepts and practice of social entrepreneurship, in teamwork, and – most importantly – in their own capability to create positive impact.

We believe that this experience is valuable for students and society, regardless of whether students choose to apply their learning as social entrepreneurs, in public or private organizations or other forms of civic engagement in course or after Social Impact Award. Therefore, we aim to increase the number and preparedness of students that use their talent for creating impact.

With over 20 million students in the EU alone, we see an enormous potential for educating and supporting the next generation of social entrepreneurs in Europe. Currently, only a few percent of these students get in touch with the topics of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship throughout their formal education and even less receive support in building social ventures. We believe that Social Impact Award holds to promise to reach many more of these students and help them unleashing their social entrepreneurial talent.