Yesterday, the Social Impact Awards (SIA) took place at the HUB Vienna revealing the most promising Austrian entrepreneurs and projects – as selected by the SIA jury and the community. Hannah Lux, project manager of the Social Impact Awards and part of HUB Vienna Incubation, opened the event by introducing the Twitter wall, which allowed us to follow what happened at similar events in Prague, Bucharest, and Bratislava.Two years ago, Lux won a Social Impact Award herself.
In the course of her speech, Lux emphasised the need for social entrepreneurship classes for students. Twenty workshops in eight cities in Austria, with 423 participants, were held this year alone. The SIA received 92 submissions and 15.000 community votes.
Peter Vandor, currently researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Vienna University for Business and Economics (WU), founded the Social Impact Award in 2008. In his speech, he hinted on Russia taking part in the programme as well next year. And he shared some statistics: “Over 70% of the participants told us that the programme helped them identify and upgrade their projects. They also claimed that it improved their business model and allowed them to structure their road maps in more detail.” 28% of the participants believe that their initiative would have never seen the light of day if it wasn’t for the SIA programme. And an astonishing 77,3% claims to continue with their projects, even if they do not win an award.
Franz-Karl Prüller, board member of Erste Stiftung, mused the high quality of this year’s submissions and Hinnerk Hansen, Managing Director at the HUB Vienna, admired the participants for their courage. He semi-jokingly added that it must be hard to tell one’s parents that you are going to put your studies on hold to ”go and save the world”: ”Today we count 6000 social entrepreneurs at HUBs worldwide. The most exciting social entrepreneurs come from the SIA programme.”<
The winners
BUCH – Piloten, an open publishing platform from Vienna enabling children to become authors.
Silver linings, an initiative aiming to train elderly people to become consultants for product development.
Werkstadt Meidling, who plan to set up public workshops in empty buildings in Vienna’s district of Meidling.
TheaterFlucht, a theatre and dance project for young asylum seekers and Austrians.
An extra prize, with the compliments of Martin Haiderer, SIA coach and front man of Kompassberatung, was reserved for Institut für angewandte Korruption, coaching them through the entire startup process.
Find out more about past winners of Social Impact Award:
Pragulic: City walks with the homeless
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