Social Innovation & Social Entrepreneurship in Barcelona

Whether the two go hand in hand or are very distinct and separate activities, both are hard at work improving the world we live in. The Mission: Transform society for the better, make an impact and add sustainable value for future generations. It’s good to see that in Barcelona more and more initiatives are placing their focus on this topic.

Changemakers in Barcelona unite!

Whether it starts from scratch in search of state-of-the-art new solutions to the world’s largest problems or it’s based on an effort to re-imagine, re-invent and re-design old propositions, a little bit of help is always welcome. And what’s better than using the wisdom of the crowd? Activate the audience, let them ask questions, help develop (innovative) solutions for social problems and work together to imporve propositions and business cases.  Because social innovation alone without a sustainable revenue stream is like swimming against the tide. Everyone has their own unique experiences and can add value as a mentor or advisor. To coordinate our efforts, some tools like design thinking, the business model canvas and a stakeholder analysis can be employed to maximize our impact.

Last week, several organizers like IE business school, HUB Madrid, Ashoka and Fundacion CREAS, gathered a group of 60+ social enthusiasts to listen to pitches from 5 Barcelona social startups. Herewith a small overview of their projects:

• Afables: improving the life of “care-needing” people by improving the quality of “home aid”. How? By a booking.com like platform for home care, where practitioners can be rated and recommendations are given and shared.
• Worldwise: facilitate worldwide international experience, volunteer work and internships in one of the following sectors: environment, social, tourism, media or technology.
• Social Coin: collaborating tool to do good, work on solidarity and have a real impact on sustainability. Whenever 80 persons conduct a Social Coin challenge, a tree will be planted.
• Prometteo: working on accessibility and safety for disabled deaf people by creating intelligent services. Barcelona is the first pilot city that will start using audiovisual instructions.
• Incubaeco: an incubator for eco-entrepreneurs. Uniting entrepreneurs working towards sustainability and creating positive news. Sharing insight with different locations to bring local solutions by local people.

The winner was Prometteo. The second part of the event was a dedicated workshop to help Prometteo in their quest to improve the world of the deaf.

 

Image credit: Plixeo