Has Your Startup Changed A Child’s Life For Good? Enter The UNICEF UK + Europas Award

Right now, millions of children around the world are in danger. They’re facing violence, disease, hunger, and the chaos of war and disaster. Innovation in technology has the potential to help change that for good – building a world where every child is safe, healthy and happy. The work of UNICEF Innovation, together with its partners, has shown that technology is key in developing solutions to the issues that children face now and in the future.

That’s why UNICEF UK and The Europas Conference And Awards, together with TechCrunch’s support, have created a new industry award: “Best Tech: Changing Children’s Lives For Good Award.”

You can enter a nomination for the award here.

Through sponsorship of this award, UNICEF UK wants to encourage tech entrepreneurs, investors and government stakeholders to join them in tackling some of the great challenges facing children. We all want technology and innovation to embed the principles that ‘doing good is good business’ and that children are everyone’s business – and everyone’s future.

This will be the Judging criteria:

• Social impact: How does your start up / technology positively impact the lives of children? How do you ensure that your technology ‘does no harm’ (depending on the context – how do you mitigate the risks around e.g. security of data, personally identifiable information or online safety for children)?

• Reach: Does your start up / technology have the potential to scale to impact the lives of millions of children? Does your start up / technology reach (or have the potential to reach) the most marginalised children? (e.g. those living in poverty, disabled children, minority communities)

• Build for sustainability: How is your start up / technology addressing environmental concerns? Does your technology / start up utilise and invest in the strengthening of local communities and developers?

• User centred design: How have you worked together with children, young people and local communities to design your technology / start up?

Applications
There is an open application process.

Judging process
Investor judges and UNICEF experts will select the final winners.

On the day
UNICEF UK will have an ‘unconference’ session at The Europas Conference in London, plus a demo table highlighting the potential uses of real-time data, virtual reality, Raspberry Pi, biotech sensors among others in helping the world’s most vulnerable children.