The European Commission announces the winners of the 2020 European Social Innovation Competition

- A total of 200,000€ awarded to four Social Innovation Projects

- The competition aims to find early-stage, scalable solutions to Europe's most pressing issues

BRUSSELS, Nov. 30, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the European Commission announces the Winners of the 2020 European Social Innovation Competition.

The three winning projects from the 2020 "Reimagine Fashion" Competition will each receive 50,000€ for demonstrating outstanding potential to change behaviours around sustainable fashion. The 2020 winners are:

-  resortecs (Belgium)
A start-up that has developed dissolvable stitching thread and heat-dismountable rivets, helping simplify the process of reusing and recycling textile products.

-  Snake (Croatia)
A digital commerce platform that enables users to wear limitless outfits in augmented reality, thus helping to change the way fashion is consumed.

-  WhyWeCraft: Cultural Sustainability in Fashion (Romania)
A legal support mechanism for craftspeople and designers. The project is empowering those who are maintaining traditional practices, by opening up access to otherwise complicated legal concepts.

The three 2020 Winners were selected by an expert jury panel from a total of 766 applicants from across Europe. In July, 30 Semi-Finalists participated in the European Social Innovation Competition's Digital Academy - an intensive training and coaching programme designed to develop their initiatives.

Impact Prize

Impact is at the heart of the European Social Innovation Competition. The 2020 Impact Prize was open to all Semi-Finalists from the previous year's edition of the European Social Innovation Competition. It recognises the innovation that has demonstrated the most significant results leading to social impact across the past 12 months under the theme 'Challenging Plastic Waste'.

The 2020 Impact Prize, worth 50,000€, was awarded to:

Empower (Norway)

Empower was founded with a vision to empower people to create a cleaner and better world. It is based on the idea of using new technology to enable a circular economy. The project developed a digital plastic waste collection system through which plastic waste can be deposited -and collected- for a financial reward.

All of the 2020 Winners were announced at a virtual Awards Ceremony which took place as part of the digital European Social Economy Exchange Event.

The Judging Panel