Team up for social impact! New initiative “Makers Innovation Award” (MIA) was launched in October 2023! Part of the TOLOCAR project, MIA aims to support the innovation ecosystem in Ukraine, especially the makers community, by providing opportunities to develop and exchange innovative ideas with social impact potential, make use of tailor-made mentoring sessions, and win a prize of 50k Euros for bringing ideas to life in a sustainable manner.
Background and Context
The ongoing war in Ukraine significantly impacts the country's Innovation Ecosystem, leading to substantial negative effects on Ukrainian society and its social cohesion. Within Ukrainian civil society, the maker movement is driven by a strong commitment to fostering social cohesion. By facilitating collaborations among makers and maker spaces, this movement enables the realization of innovative ideas and cultivates the emergence of new innovative ventures that prioritize quality over quantity, impact over profit, and coexistence over cut-throat competition. In line with these objectives, this program aims to establish a dedicated incubator program at the intersection of technology and the common good, strategically tackling challenges like balancing capacity building with development, and enhancing networking skills.
Description of the Innovation Program
To address these challenges, it is crucial to provide support to the maker movement in order to identify innovative and sustainable solutions for the current issues at hand, which will subsequently receive funding. The program will be structured into four distinct phases, aimed at achieving the following objectives:
Activation Phase: In this ideation workshop, participants will develop their innovative ideas, engaging in an exchange with the fellow participants and creating synergies, to advance the common good and the reconstruction efforts. Welcoming individuals engaged in maker-related activities, including those from maker spaces and NGOs, the event offers an opportunity to expand their knowledge on project management and get new skills for leading sustainable projects. capacity development opportunity.
Innovation Phase: Second, a call for proposals will be launched to create incentives to turn ideas into innovative projects. While working on their applications for funding, applicants will be offered to attend two virtual training sessions focused on improving their proposal writing, and pitching.
Selection Phase: Pre-selected participants will pitch their projects to a panel of experts during an in-person event. The panel will assess and select up to eight projects based on predefined criteria, determining the recipients of the funding.
Mentoring & Support Phase: The winning projects will receive up to three virtual calls with trainers, mentors and/or coaches to support the development of their projects.
#TOLOCAR is a project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ @bmz_bund) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH with support of betterplace lab gGmbH and Future Challenges e.V. in close collaboration with Ukrainian and international partners.