Press Release: Best social innovation ideas. New ways to create new jobs and businesses

Social innovation can stimulate new business models addressing unmet social needs. Today, José Manuel Durão Barroso, President of the European Commission, has awarded the first Social Innovation prizes for three ground-breaking ideas that seek new ways to create more and better jobs in Europe. The winning projects aim to reduce youth employment by sharing jobs among young and older employees, to extend the reach and quality of small-scale social care and health services via an app, and to improve access to the job market for economically deprived by making their skills widely visible.

To boost social innovation, the European Commission has launched the Social Innovation Competition in memory of Diogo Vasconcelos on the 1 October 2012. Europeans were invited to develop solutions for creating new opportunities for work, and for better work. As a result over 600 proposals were received out of which three were awarded with a prize of €20,000 at the European Social Innovation Awards Ceremony in Brussels on 29 May 2013.