The Social Cup

The Social Cup is the French social entrepreneurship cup for young people aged 18 to 30. Since 2014, it has been supporting and rewarding young entrepreneurs who wish to respond to the social and environmental challenges of their generation.

Practitioners:

Gilles Evrard Essuman is a youth worker who has trained, consulted and participated in a plethora of youth work projects across Europe. His field of  expertise is social innovation, grassroots’ movements and non-formal education for community participation in territorial development. He’s also a doctoral researcher and lecturer in economic geography at the university of Luxembourg.

Objectives:

Encourage youth to take action by supporting them in their entrepreneurial projects of social and environmental utility.

Structure of the process:

The Social Cup is divided in three phase:
1 ) Discovery phase (October – November)
In this phase 60 mobilisers (trained volunteers) criss-cross France to raise awareness among young people aged 18 to 30. Initiations to social entrepreneurship, tech for good and collective intelligence workshops to find solutions to
today’s and tomorrow’s challenges: good opportunities to allow young people to increase their skills, exercise their power to act and have the desire to get involved. During these interventions, the Social Cup team will present the rest of the programme to the young people they meet.
2 ) Giant creathon phase (January)
The creathon is a time of collective innovation to create socially or environmentally useful projects, or to advance existing projects.
3 ) Competition phase (January to March)
A call for projects will be open to all young people between the ages of 18 and 30 who want to develop their social enterprise, whether or not they have participated in one of the Creathons.
A local jury will select the best projects, which will then be examined by a national jury, which will select a winning project for each city. The twelve finalists will receive one month of support from well established business incubators (for e.g. Ashoka at STATION F in Paris) in preparation for the final battle. The programme includes
numerous training sessions (public speaking, crowdfunding, community building, business model, etc.) and the creation of a team spirit!

Source/Acknowledgments:

Gilles Essuman, RESOPA, France

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