The European Young Innovators – an initiative in the framework of WSA
From 2020 on, EYA (European Youth Award) becomes part of WSA. The pan European initiative highlighting and encouraging purpose driven digital entrepreneurship will be merged into WSA as WSA European Young Innovators.
WSA is a global contest, community and award series highlighting digital solutions for the UN SDGs. WSA is a truly global community of social entrepreneurs, tech start-ups, government partners, corporates and international organisations, believing in the power of technology.
2 become 1 – WSA and EYA merge to foster social sustainable impact, offer support and wider opportunities for young digital entrepreneurs globally.
Voices from the Community
EYA – The Story
EYA was a initiative organised by the International Center for New Media (ICNM), a non-profit organisation located in Salzburg, and has been officialy established since 2012. But the idea of EYA began one year before that, when another, quite similar and global initiative held a festival in Graz, Austria. That event sparked the idea to create a local contest: an European award, which would hold their final event/festival in the same place every year. And so continue to bring young creative minds and international experts together to Graz, Austria.
The city of Graz, a friendly place for entrepreneurs and concepts that improve the world, welcomed the idea and so the first European Youth Award contest was held in 2012, along with the first EYA Festival (winners event) in late Autumn. It began as a simple contest, but new things started to be organized year-by-year:
- Firstly, EYA initiated Game Jams – coding events with the purpose of creating games with societal benefits.
- Then the jury was brought from online to on-site, in order to improve the decision making process.
- The Mentorship program was added, which provides the EYA contest’s winners the ability to learn from experts from their respective fields.
- Later on, EYA partnered up with universities and created the Youth For Innovation student programs, where students analyse and give feedback to the EYA contest’s winning projects.
- More recently, the SHacks (social hackathons) were introduced, which are 48h long coding events with the purpose of creating digital solutions with impact on society.
From 2020 on, EYA (European Youth Award) becomes part of WSA. The pan European initiative highlighting and encouraging purpose driven digital entrepreneurship will be merged into WSA as WSA European Young Innovators.
EYA wouldn’t be possible without their great partners, patrons and supporters:
