Image depicting young social innovators globally. Image via Young Social Innovators' Facebook Page
Irish youth organisation Young Social Innovators (YSI) has been nominated as the Irish entry to the 2013 World Summit Award (WSA) in the ‘e-Inclusion & Empowerment’ category. YSI’s Social Innovation Hub will now be vying against almost 500 e-content global nominees from 168 countries at the WSAs, which will be held in Tallinn, Estonia, at the end of the month.
The Young Social Innovators’ newly developed digital Social Innovation Hub, coupled with its website, has been nominated for the award. Along with about 500 other entries, YSI will be judged by an international jury of ICT experts in late August.
In relation to the online hub that YSI has come up with, the not-for-profit devised the new online portal with the support of the Vodafone Ireland Foundation.
According to YSI, the hub is an online space for young people to platform, share and co-create social innovation activities that promote positive social change.
ICT meet-up in Estonia
In the first round of the WSA, an online jury will evaluate the nominated digital ventures, including YSI. The jury will be made up of ICT experts and industry leaders. They will whittle down the entries to a shortlist of 15-20 projects in each of the eight categories in the digital awards.
Apart from the e-Inclusion & Empowerment category, the other seven categories in the WSAs include e-Government & Open Data; e-Health & Environment; e-Learning & Science; e-Entertainment & Games; e-Culture & Tourism; e-Media & Journalism; and e-Business & Commerce.
After this, in a three-day process in late August, the jury will meet in Tallin to evaluate the submissions from the remaining nominees and select the 40 products it deems to be the best in the digital space right now in their respective categories
According to the WSA, the jury members will come from around the world and have backgrounds in the creative industries, telecommunications, advertising, journalism, research, and teaching.
WSA World Congress in Colombo, Sri Lanka
After the August finals, the 40 chosen e-content applications will then present their products at the WSA’s World Congress in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in late October.
“With the winners from World Summit Award in e-Content, Colombo will host the best digital producers, interaction designers and content developers from all around the world. They will demonstrate the richness and diversity of the content industries,” said Peter Bruck, chairman of the World Summit Award.
The WSA is the global follow-up initiative of the United Nations World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). The former aims to highlight local diversity and creativity of ICT use.
The not-for-profit organisation YSI was founded in 2001 by Rachel Collier and Sr Stanislaus Kennedy. To date, some 70pc of youths from post-primary schools have been using YSI to connect with and reach out to other youth organisations.
To date, some 47,000 teenagers in Ireland have taken part in YSI’s programmes on social innovation.
