Christar International rewarded for their innovation in the Social Challenges Innovation Platform

Christar International was part of the solution for unemployed refugees and immigrants and was one of 81 selected Solution Providers from the European Social Challenges Innovation Platform to receive a grant to develop a Minimum Viable Product and to implement their ideas, solving real-world ideas.

Christar International's innovation idea, To the Tenth Power, identify, assess and equip an entrepreneur in the immigrant community and incubate and accelerate his/her micro enterprise that will hire 10 unemployed immigrants. The process then will repeat and be used to create new local, regional and global enterprises that eliminates unemployment.

The solution kicked off in August and September 2018 with the training for 9 personnel of local NGOs as start-up facilitators and the first incubator was launched in October 2018. The first six immigrant entrepreneurs graduated at the end of December 2018 with minimal viable products or services and one business has already opened with two employees.

In January 2019, the graduates will be making their pitches to BIC Euronova for the opportunity to have their businesses accelerated. The next group of immigrant entrepreneurs are being vetted now and will start in the next start up academy in March 2019.

Social Challenges Innovation Platform is a far-reaching European action, brought to reality by META Group, European BIC Network and Impact Hub, with the support of the European Commission. The platform aimed to create an online ecosystem and encouraged the interaction between social innovators and SMEs for the co-development and take-up of sustainable and marketable innovations with clear social impact. Since the kick-off in 2017, SocialChallenges.eu became the European ‘go to’ platform for social innovation demand and supply to meet.