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

Brussels (ots) - - A total of 200,000EUR awarded to four Social Innovation
Projects

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

Today, the European Commission announces the Winners of the 2020 European Social
Innovation Competition (https://eusic.challenges.org/) .

The three winning projects from the 2020 "Reimagine Fashion" Competition will
each receive 50,000EUR 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 50,000EUR, was awarded to: Empower
(http://empower.eco) (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
(https://www.euses2020.eu/exchange-events/) . The Judging Panel The European
Social Innovation Competition selects a new Judging Panel every year. As a