Sparking Awesome Ideas: Wittenborg Lecturer Part of Jury for European Youth Award 2015

24.10.2015

WUAS lecturer, Geert de Haan, was recently one of the jury members who selected the winners of the 2015 European Youth Award (EYA) - producing some of the most exciting ICT innovations this side of the Atlantic.

EYA is a pan-European contest which was created to motivate young people - social entrepreneurs and start-ups - to produce digital projects with an impact on society.

For instance, one of the winning projects is an app helping people not to find the quickest way to get from point A to B, but the most beautiful way to get to your destination. Quite fittingly, it’s called Pretty Streets! Its founders are from France.

Another winning project was City Tree, which makes clean and cool air not only sustainable, but also profitable. The first City Tree was installed in Jena, Germany, with more to follow. The EYA contest produced 13 winning projects in total that will receive their awards at the annual EYA Festival from 18 - 21 November 2015.

Participants had to demonstrate their potential to create innovative solutions with Internet and Mobile technology while addressing the goals defined by the Council of Europe and Europe 2020. Oh, and they had to be 30 years old or under!

De Haan, who was an online jury member, said: “In short, EYA is a contest for teams of young innovative people, mostly students, who have designed creative and social ICT solutions to help attain some of the UN’s Millennium Goals.” De Haan currently teaches IBA modules related to Information Management and Statistics at WUAS as well as some modules in the MBA programme.

After a first evaluation by the online jury - at Cluj-Napoca in Romania, the 2015 European Youth Capital - an international grand jury selected the overall winners among the submitted projects in the categories: Healthy Life, Smart Learning, Connecting Cultures, Go Green, Active Citizenship and Money Matters.