The winners of the 2020 European Social Innovation Competition

We congratulate the three winners of the European Social Innovation Competition 2020! We celebrated their innovations on 26 November during the awards ceremony as part of the European Social Economy Summit. They received a trophy and 50,000 euros to further their innovative solution to Reimagine Fashion. Each of the winners is taking a leading-edge innovative approach to changing behaviours around sustainable fashion. The European Social Innovation Competition is an initiative of DG Growth of the European Commission, and is organised by Kennisland++Kennisland and the CompetitionKennisland has been involved with the European Social Innovation Competition for eight years. Read more about the Competition and Kennisland’s work here. in cooperation with Nesta, Ashoka, ENoLL and Scholz & Friends.

The winners of the 2020 European Social Innovation Competition are: 

• resortecs® (Belgium)
  A start-up that has developed dissolvable stitching thread and heat-dismountable rivets, that helps to simplify the process of reusing and recycling textile products.
• Snake (Croatia)
  A digital commerce platform that enables users to wear limitless outfits in augmented reality, thus helping to change the way fashion is consumed.
• WhyWeCraft: Cultural Sustainability in Fashion (Romania)
  A legal support mechanism for craftspeople and designers. The project is empowering those who are maintaining traditional practices by opening up access to otherwise complicated legal concepts.

The three 2020 winners were selected by an expert jury panel++Meet the judgesOur judging panel is a diverse group of sustainable fashion and social innovation experts. Read more on the judging panel here. from a total of 766 applicants from across Europe. During the summer thirty Semi-Finalists received an extensive mentoring programme++Mentoring programmeKennisland has extensive experience with tailor made support programmes and challenge prizes. Examples of this are Amsterdammers, Make your City!, our programme for the Ratkaisu-100, and the delivery of the support programme during eight years of the European Social Innovation Competition. Read more including one-on-one coaching, peer-to-peer learning, webinars and the opportunity to learn from a select pool of experts in the field of social innovation. The highlight in the coaching programme was the European Social Innovation Competition’s Digital Academy in July – an intensive training designed by Kennisland to develop their initiatives. The highlight in the coaching programme was the European Social Innovation Competition’s Digital Academy in July – an intensive training designed by Kennisland to develop their initiatives. 

We are very proud of the winners of this year’s competition, congratulations! And we want to give a big shout out to all thirty Semi-Finalists who have worked so hard on their projects during a trying time for entrepreneurs all over the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Well done and keep it up!

Impact Prize

In addition to our Reimagine Fashion winners, we also had a winner of the 2020 Impact Prize chosen from the Semi-Finalists of last year’s competition, Challenging Plastic Waste. Impact is at the heart of the European Social Innovation Competition and with this prize the Competition recognises the innovation that has demonstrated the most significant results leading to social impact during the past twelve months. The 2020 Impact Prize, worth 50,000 euros, was awarded to: Empower (Norway) 

Empower was founded with a vision to empower people to create a cleaner and better world. It is based on the idea of using new technology to enable a circular economy. The project developed a digital plastic waste collection system through which plastic waste can be deposited – and collected – for a financial reward. 

The full list of semi-finalists in the 2020 Competition can be found here. 

You can follow the European Social Innovation Competition via @EUSocialInnov and #diogochallenge or sign up for the Competition newsletter!