Ashoka Italy, with the support of the Never Alone network, is implementing the project “Hello Europe – la migrazione che fa innovazione” at the national level.
The Hello Europe experience
Hello Europe is a European initiative launched by Ashoka in 2016. It consists of a platform to promote and support entrepreneurship and social innovation projects in the migration sector. Already implemented in Germany, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and the Scandinavian countries, Hello Europe was initiated in Italy by Ashoka Italy in 2018 with the support of Fondazione CRT, Compagnia di San Paolo, Fondazione Con Il Sud, PWC and OliverWyman.
In the last few years, Ashoka Italy has mapped the ecosystem of social innovation in the field of migration and selected the most effective projects with the highest potential for impact, involving key players in the ecosystem such as the International Organization for Migration, NESTA, Comunità Sant’Egidio, Fondazione ISMU.
As a result of the mapping, Ashoka Italy selected eight final projects which were then accompanied through an eight-week acceleration process. At the end of the process, three winning projects were selected, and they shared a cash prize of 15,000 Euros.
Hello Europe – Hello Europe – la migrazione che fa innovazione
Programme for 2021 – 2022
From the acceleration process mentioned above, some key pain points emerged as deep gaps in the migration ecosystem: poor strategic and systemic planning of public and private interventions for the inclusion and assistance of migrants; unequal access to opportunities and services by migrants, due to language or cultural barriers; lack of involvement/awareness of the for-profit world into the topic; thematic distortion of some migrant-related issues.
Through the involvement of key stakeholders in this system, Ashoka’s Hello Europe program aims to strengthen the innovation and social entrepreneurship ecosystem in the field of migration and to disseminate and support the most innovative and virtuous solutions with particular attention to young and very young foreigners in Italy.
In order to achieve this goal, Ashoka will undertake a path of 4 phases:
1) Creation of First Alliances, that will be use as means to map and involve key actors and stakeholders of the profit and no profit entrepreneurship ecosystems, and of the “receiving migrants” ecosystem;
2) Analysis of the ecosystem and challenges, undertaken by the stakeholders involved in the project. In particular, they will be engaged in producing an ecosystem analysis around the challenges that young and very young foreigners in Italy face in the transition to the job market, with particular attention to the difficulties encountered developing start-ups or new initiatives.
3) Co-creation: on the basis of the challenges emerged in the previous activity, Ashoka plans to launch a thematic hackathon for young and very young foreigners in Italy who, starting from their own idea, will be guided and provided with the tools to develop their idea. As a result of the hackathon, 5 solutions will be selected to be incubated and accelerated.
4) Institutionalisation: the results of the co-creation work will be presented at the Ashoka Changemaker Summit, Europe’s largest gathering of innovators and social entrepreneurs, in Turin in December 2021.