At the Social Impact Award 2024 gala, which took place this year at the Impact Hub in Brno, the winners were announced, who dazzled both the jury and the audience with their innovative projects. The projects Memoirist, Safeli and Zkratky života took home the jury prize, while the project Naše Hnízdo won the audience prize. What made them apply, what challenges did they face and what are their plans for the future? We asked the founders of the winning projects directly about this.
Social Impact Award (SIA) is a prestigious international program that supports young innovators in establishing socially beneficial projects. The program offers education and mentoring to budding entrepreneurs who are trying to solve current social and environmental challenges with their projects. The partners of this year's 13th edition of SIA Czech Republic were Czech Savings Bank, SAP, PwC, First Foundation, Vienna University of Economics and BusinessThe winning projects received a prize worth 1500 euros and will now travel to the international SIA summit in Mannheim, where they will meet winners from 18 other countries.
Memoirist Team – Kateřina Kubišová, Adam Petříček and Ondřej Špok
Memoirist is an application that helps people record the life stories of their loved ones and transform them into biographies using artificial intelligence. This project was created with the aim of preserving memories for future generations.
What made you want to participate in SIA? It was recommended to us by our friend from Nekrachniwho went through the SIA incubation program in 2021. We felt that this program could help us enter the market and really start helping people.
What were your biggest challenges during the incubation program? Sometimes I had to push the guys' very creative ideas, but communication was the key to success.
What do you take away from the incubation project? It definitely took us a long way, we learned a lot of new things, we met a lot of new people and I think we will benefit from it for a long time. It also gave us some “accountability”. We had some deadlines that we simply had to meet. And we would have given ourselves those as part of our team, but it wouldn’t have been so binding. At the same time, I feel like it helped us to be more certain about things that we had already set, but we weren’t 100% sure about.
What do you plan for the future? In the near future, we plan to finish our MVP (minimum viable product). And finally, we can start helping people, because that's what it all started with. So, ideally, we should start writing the first books with our first customers within the next few months.
Gitika Bhalla and Natálie Dvořáková – founders of the Safeli project
Safeli aims to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases with an app that will allow for anonymous infection tracking.
Why did you apply to SIA? The idea came about a bit out of boredom, but we realized it had huge potential. At the same time, we wanted to create a project that had a real social impact.
What were your biggest challenges during the incubation program? It was difficult for us to balance time with our mentors and also find a way to make the project financially sustainable. In order for it to be not only non-profit, we needed to find where the money was potentially in the problem. And this was because we were not dependent on anything outside.
What do you plan for the future? We want to create our website to inform previous partners about the positive test result and start investing in branding and marketing.
Where can we follow you and support your project? That's not possible yet. We haven't gotten that far yet, but it's definitely in the plans for the future. When you can follow us somewhere, we'll be in touch. (Note from one of the founders: We're planning a "hard launch", so I don't think you'll suddenly miss it) 🙂
Nela Červenková's Podcast – Shortcuts to Life
Podcast Life's Shortcuts focuses on interviews with people who have experienced social exclusion and how we as a society can better address these issues.
What made you apply to SIA? I went to the Rozjeď projekt in Karlovka, where I had a really great mentor, Jan Veselý, who told me to apply here, so thanks to him.
What were your biggest challenges during the incubation program? Honestly, the biggest challenge for me was probably the presentation here at the Gala. Looking back on it now, it was probably the most stressful for me.
What are you planning for the future? I have pretty big plans now. With the money I received from SIA, I plan to buy some equipment so I can travel with the podcast outside of Prague. So I could set up a mini studio.
Where can we follow you and support your project? So Shortcuts of Life are actually on all social networks – Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube a Spotify – there are actually entire episodes there.
Nikol, Lenka, Lilly and Markéta – four mothers and founders of the Our Nest project
Our Nest is a coworking space where family life and work are intertwined, allowing parents to work without having to leave their children. This project won the audience award.
What are your first feelings about winning? We are thrilled to have won the audience award – it is the most important thing for us, because we were appreciated by the very people we do this for. And we are happy that we have additional resources to keep our idea alive and continue with it.
What was your biggest challenge during the incubation program? The biggest challenge was traveling to Prague for all those workshops that weren't online. Because we all have small children...and that was exactly the impetus when we founded a coworking center with a respectful approach to children (note from one of the founders) 🙂
What do you plan for the future? So, now our biggest challenge will probably be the Advent at Staré náměstí. It will be in Orlová and it will be a kind of premiere for us, because it will be one of those larger public events. We also plan to expand coworking for parents and children and develop other activities for children.
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