1,134

Total Number of Projects

In 2020, KKB organized the seventh edition of the social innovation ideas contest, “You Imagine, We Realize,” which was implemented for the first time in 2013 to raise social responsibility awareness and increase sensitivity towards social issues among university students. This year, the contest has acquired a social innovation focus, in line with the requirements of our era.

The “You Imagine, We Realize” Social Innovation Project Ideas contest was open for university students’ applications from October 1, 2019, to January 8, 2020. Nearly 2 thousand project applications about the environment, education, culture and arts, health, sports, financial literacy, technology, and society were received during the application period. From among a total of 1,134 project applications from 132 different universities all around Turkey, the “Artificial Intelligence-Based Smart Beehive Tracking System” project received the first prize.

Until today, nearly 10 thousand applications have been submitted for the Social Innovation Project Ideas Contest, which was launched in 2013 and continued with the increasing interest of university students year after year.

The semi-final and final stages of the “You Imagine, We Realize” social innovation project ideas contest were organized online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among thousands of valuable creative ideas, projects that qualified for the top 100 joined the “back to entrepreneurs” online platform and passed the necessary steps to reach the final phase to further develop their projects. Pre-evaluation interviews with these 100 projects were conducted on our online system. The top 10 finalists held mentoring meetings for 3 weeks with the KKB Manager assigned to them. After the mentoring phase, the videos prepared by finalists to present their projects were delivered to the jury members along with the project documentation. The jury panel, which evaluated finalist projects, consisted of İbrahim Betil, civil society volunteer; Yasemin Salih, journalist; Fügen Toksü, communication expert; Özlem Denizmen, businesswoman and social entrepreneur; Fatoş Karahasan, academician and journalist; Can Yılmaz, actor, scriptwriter and writer; and Cem Seymen, journalist and presenter. As a result of the jury evaluation, the winners were awarded 30 thousand TRY as the first- place prize, 20 thousand TRY as the second-place prize, 15 thousand TRY as the third-place prize, and 10 thousand TRY as the special Findeks prize. Other project owners who made it to the finals received a 1,000-TRY Special Jury Award and obtained a certificate after completing the entrepreneurship program.