ClimateLaunchpad 2020 hits Bhutan
World’s Largest Green Business Idea Competition Seeks Idea
ClimateLaunchpad, powered by Climate-KIC and supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), an initiative of the European Union hits 2020 with a mission of successful green business idea competition worldwide and first time in Bhutan. Focus is to fix climate change, one start-up at a time, accelerating innovation enabling a low-carbon future. That kind of change needs massive amounts of the world’s best green ideas and this is the world’s largest platform of green business idea competition for new ideas to flourish. Anyone with a green business idea who wants to become an entrepreneur can enter the competition. The contest is set up to help entrepreneurs grow their green ideas into global businesses.
Gen Lab, a youth led social enterprise, is the country partner for Bhutan of the competition of 2020. Gen Lab has created a strong youth platform in the social development sector. The main focus of the organization is SDG’s, specifically Climate Action, democracy & good governance, women empowerment and Peace & Social Justice. Gen lab has worked with notable partners such as, US Embassy, United Nation Development Program, EIT Climate KIC (European Union), RightStart Foundation UK. Since 2016 Gen Lab has implemented 29 social projects with support and partnership of national and international agencies. In recent times they have initiated their operations in Bhutan, Myanmar and Spain.
ClimateLaunchpad is at present a Global brand, but with a strong local touch. Frans Nauta, founder of ClimateLaunchpad who also serves Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, as a visiting scholar has said, “We have to fix climate change and we have one generation to fix it. All over the world, there are so many great entrepreneurs working on ideas to tackle climate change. ClimateLaunchpad boosts those entrepreneurs to global success through training and giving them an international stage.”
Students and youth are the change agents, they are powerful ambassadors of climate curation too. Universities, colleges, youth organizations, local clubs, NGO’s and overall collaborative approach is essential to achieve low carbon future. ClimateLaunchpad expects 3000 ideas this year, 25 from each country means 25 ideas from Bhutan. ClimateLaunchpad hopes Bhutan – being the role model of climate conservation will make a great impact through their ideas. The application deadline is – 30th June, 2020 for Bhutan. After the idea submission from participating countries, the teams start with a 3-day Boot Camp and six Coaching Sessions to prepare for their National Finals. The Top-2 of all National Finals will get a chance to pitch their idea in front of the review board of EIT Climate-KIC Accelerator during the Global Grand Final. There, through semi-finals 16 teams will be selected to perform in the Global Grand Final. The top-10 will win direct access into EIT Climate-KIC Accelerator without having to pitch to a review board. Besides this, the overall winner of the Global Grand Final receives € 10,000, the runner up gets € 5,000 and the idea that comes in third place wins € 2,500. ClimateLaunchpad welcomes innovations in renewable energy, energy efficiency, food security, addressing pollutions and negative externality and agriculture, water, transportation, industrial technology or any other way to tackle climate change. The judging criteria are impact on climate change, business potential and skills within the team. Typically ClimateLaunchpad is a cross border international program, but this year due to COVID 19 all activities will be performed online.
More about ClimateLaunchpad and Climate-KIC
ClimateLaunchpad (www.climatelaunchpad.org) is a program by Climate-KIC; the EU’s main climate innovation initiative. It is Europe’s largest public-private innovation partnership focused on mitigating and adapting to climate change. Climate-KIC consists of an international network of companies, academic institutions and the public sector. Climate-KIC is one of the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) created in 2010 by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), the EU body tasked with creating sustainable European growth while dealing with the global challenges of this time.
More information at https://climatelaunchpad.org/
To apply: https://climatelaunchpad.org/application-form/
Contact with the Country Lead – Gen Lab
Phone: +8801675908787 ( WhatsApp Only)
Email: mail2genlab@gmail.com , bhutan@climatelaunchpad.org
Facebook event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/267951047622932/
Website: https://climatelaunchpad.org/countries/bhutan/