Calling all Change-Makers
With their innovative ideas and leadership, social entrepreneurs can help tackle some of the key challenges of today and offer sustainable solutions for tomorrow. The Social Entrepreneurs Initiative provides seed grants to allow them to do that.
From Big Ideas to Big Change
Over the past three years we have been fostering ideas with the potential for big change. Check out the development of two of our first projects since they started in 2012.
Buying a new home is a stressful process. In Moldova, however, an additional concern has buyers worried – the threat that the building construction company will disappear, taking their life savings with them. More.
In Romania, a disconnect between citizens and the budgetary process has resulted in a lack of citizens’ participation and budgets that do not reflect their needs. But the Funky Citizens are changing that. More.
Follow the Projects
Find out more about our on-going projects below, including our newest winners from our most recent Global and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) competitions. These were our most successful competitions to-date: we had over 150 applications to the Global competition and over 100 applications from the MENA region. Each winner will receive a mini-grant of €5000 to kick off the implementation of their project. As always, we are really excited by the high level of innovation and dedication to transparency, integrity and anti-corruption. You can also follow the social entrepreneurs on our blog.
Could you Run a City for a Day?
Do the workings of government seem inaccessible? They don’t have to be. In the USA, Aradhya and his team are designing a free video game to make average American citizens more interested in government.
Disclosure Today! Transparency on Demand
Resource-rich but accountability-poor, the government of Trinidad and Tobago needs a wake-up call from citizens who care about how resources are used. Margaret’s many years of frustration as a public procurement reform advocate led her to create a unique platform leveraging technology and new media to drive public accountability.
FAENÓN: a 3D quest to understand politics
What does governance mean to a 16-year-old school student? This is the question Paolo Rivas from Peru asked himself when he came up with his project idea. FAENÓN: A 3D Quest to Understand Politics is a board game with a twist.
Can Art Change the Game in the Arab World?
Islam Alzaini from Bahrain questions the effectiveness of the conservative approaches his region has to anti-corruption. Too dependent on instructions, directives and long circulars from above, the fight against corruption in the Arab world does not impact the people. His approach will be fun and more effective.
Health in the Hands of the People
In Egypt, Ayman Sabae sees public funds wasted and services that fail to meet the needs of the people. Sound familiar? Ayman wants to put control of health back in citizens’ hands: his project holds health providers directly accountable for the quality of their services.
Playing against Corruption
In Mauritania, people aren’t always aware that corruption isn’t only political, but takes place in their everyday life too. That’s what inspired Rajel to submit a project that starts with the public, replacing the traditional top-down way of fighting corruption.
Using Tech to Connect the Dots
For Saed, anti-corruption work in Palestine won’t make progress until diverse actors can coordinate their efforts in a systematic way. His idea will use technology to do just that, helping problems make their way from the people affected to the top of leaders’ priority lists.
Tell-it-True
Schools in Liberia suffer from a host of problems ranging from sex for grades to bribery to teacher absenteeism. We spoke to students all over the country and discovered that the key problem is that they do not have a trusted, confidential system through which they can report problems.This is where ‘Tell-it-True’ began.
No to Corruption at my School
Making people aware of the problem is the first step towards having an impact corruption. Many people in Côte d’Ivoire don’t even see corruption for what it is – a serious social issue. “No to Corruption at my School” is a film for children and teenagers portraying the realities of corruption and its consequences for those around you.
The film “No to Corruption at my School” launches on the 13th February 2015, stay tuned for more info!
Visual Data
Many Nigerians with little or no knowledge of accounting and public finance are lost when they see a government budget (if they ever get to see one). The need for every citizen to know how their taxes are used cannot be over emphasized. Visual Data will champion the provision of open data and make creative use of government data to achieve this.
Tracking Construction Companies
Buying a new home is a stressful process. In Moldova, however, an additional concern has buyers worried – the threat that the building construction company will disappear, taking their life savings with them.
Moldovan citizens have limited possibilities to check the credibility of the construction companies. This online platform provides Moldovan citizens the detailed information on construction companies’ activity and on construction projects in progress in Chisinau city.
E-Participatory Budgeting
Romanian citizens are not informed with regards to what happens with public money, even though the information is public and they have the necessary legal rights to participate to the process. Through a simple, user-friendly technology we are trying to transform engagement with the budget process into a funky activity for each citizen with access to internet.
ParaguaYOite: Engaging students to monitor school funding
In Paraguay, the great majority of schools don’t have any form of student government and students often lack critical skills and knowledge to fight corruption. At the same time the National Fund for Public Investment and Development which disburses money to schools, lacks appropriate control mechanisms. ParaguaYOite educates students at the same time as making government accountable.
Acting Against Match-Fixing
Sports fans are only aware of big match-fixing scandals. However, small sized or individual match-fixing scandals are not really known. It is about blacklisting the sports clubs and players which are found guilty of match fixing in the sports and betting community. Guilty parties will be blacklisted for two seasons.
Opening Public Jobs for the Public
In consecutive yearly country reports, corruption in Romania represents “a serious and extensive problem that affects almost every aspect of society”. The main actors and institutions engaged in fighting corruption have certain “problems regarding integrity”. My project aims at combating this by providing a simple and open mechanism for controlling recruitment and promotion within the civil service.
Mapping Corruption with Journalists & Citizens
We want to change attitudes. We want people to realize they can do something to make Colombia a more transparent society. Our two-tiered map presents multiple opportunities to promote change. The journalists’ stories now have a national platform. So will the citizen alerts. And if journalists and citizens can collaborate and work together, instead of having a collection of isolated incidents, we will have a snapshot of corruption in the country, which we hope will prompt authorities to take stronger measures against corruption.
Resisting Bribery
The project will be targeting Sana’a governorate. Basically in the first phases, the project will target youth initiatives, youth foundations and universities and youth will be trained in order to lead the Zero Note Campaign. In the last phase of the project, Young people will implement the campaign in Alsabeen park (one of the biggest parks in Sana’a) and they will target the residence of the governorate. With its population exceeding 20 million, Yemen is one of the poorest countries worldwide therefore corruption is a risk attached to our daily lives and bribery is included. Bribery is responsible for tender-related corruption, bad road construction and damage of houses. As a result we believe that getting people’s attention in this regard will help in decreasing the problems.
What is a Social Entrepreneur?
After the launch of our first ever project, we brought together the SEI winners to capture their ideas and describe the social problem they wish to change. Making use of technology and innovative thinking, click play to hear what they had to say.
Still want to learn more? Have a look at our recent blog where we talk about how to be a social entrepreneur.