New European Bauhaus Prizes 2023

Initiative category

Identify the award category for which this initiative is being submitted
Prioritising the places and people that need it the most

Email user
irene@changex.org

Basic information
Initiative title
ChangeX

Full initiative Title
ChangeX connects people with proven ideas for strengthening communities to start them

Please provide a short, catchy description of your initiative to be used in communication towards the public.
In order to address the world’s biggest challenges such as climate change, isolation, loneliness, obesity or polarization we believe we need to unlock more power in local communities. We need to use technology more creatively and accelerate the spread of the best ideas along with the knowledge and the financial resources to empower community leaders to tackle issues at the local level. ChangeX is a platform of proven innovations we want to build community wellbeing by unleashing change makers.

What was the geographical scope of your intiative?
Cross-border/international

Where was your intiative implemented?
Location 1
Ireland

Location 2
Spain
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries
- Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Austria
- Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Denmark
- Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Sweden
If relevant, insert names of region(s)/municipality(ies) involved
We also operate in Colombia, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, UK, Chile, France.

Does your initiative address mainly urban or rural issues?
It addresses urban-rural linkages

Does your initiative refer to a physical transformation of the built environment or other types of transformations (hard or soft investments)?
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)

Has your initiative benefited from EU programmes and/or funds?
No

Has your initiative won an EU prize with a monetary value awarded?
No

Does your initiative has a minimum level of maturity? The minimum level of maturity is exemplified by stakeholder/ initiative promoter commitment to implement the initiative in practice and a clear methodology /approach.
Yes

On whose behalf are you submitting the application?
As a representative of an organisation
Please provide the contact details for the project promoter (the individual or representative of the organisation authorised to represent the project)
- Name of the organisation(s): ChangeX
  Type of organisation: For-profit company
  First name of representative: Irene
  Last name of representative: Papanikolaou
  Gender: Female
  Nationality: Italy
  Function: Partnership Operations Manager
  Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: ChangeX Dogpatch Labs | CHQ Building | Docklands | Dublin 1
  Town: Dublin
  Postal code: Dublin 1
  Country: Ireland
  Direct Tel: +33 6 69 61 58 64
  E-mail: irene@changex.org
  Website: https://changex.org
Social Media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.)
- URL: https://facebook.com/changexhq
In case my initiative is selected as a finalist of the NEB Prizes 2023, I agree to share the name (individual and/or organisation’s), email address, website and social media accounts indicated above with other NEB Prizes finalists. I also agree to publish the name (individual and/or organisation’s), website and social media accounts indicated above next to the public description of my initiative in the channels of the European Commission.
Yes

How did you hear about the New European Bauhaus Prizes?
New European Bauhaus or European Commission websites

Description of the initiative
Please provide a summary of your initiative
ChangeX is a platform connecting communities to proven innovations & funding. Communities are a key driver of progress on many of the social and environmental challenges we face, yet they lack adequate access to proven innovations or grant finance. Addressing this can empower millions of new and existing teams in communities on the issues that matter.
How it works: we curate and package replicable innovations e.g. urban tree planting; funding partners finance local community teams; local teams activate the proven innovations with knowledge and finance e.g. school teachers; we measure and share impact outcomes e.g. +/- carbon tonnes. We are committed to building an efficient and scalable impact measurement system combining rigour with lean data methodology to track key indicators of short and long term impact. By 2025, we’ll make it possible to rapidly scale innovations globally in months, not decades. This superpower will give communities across the world access to some of the best social and environmental innovations so they can have a meaningful impact on the issues that matter most. This will also unlock those funders looking to maximise impact at scale on the issues and regions they care about. Our goals are to bring over 1,000 proven social and environmental innovations to global scale, mobilising millions of teams in communities to impact one billion people by 2030, all aligned with the UN sustainable development goals.

Please indicate the main themes of your initiative with 5 key words.
Community health and wellbeing

Please indicate the main themes of your initiative with key words
Education and skills

Please indicate the main themes of your initiative with key words
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice

Please indicate the main themes of your initiative with key words
Climate and environmental sustainability

Please indicate the main themes of your initiative with key words
Cultural Heritage

Please give information about the key objectives of your initiative in terms of sustainability and how these have been/will be met. Please highlight how the initiative can be exemplary in this context.
We provide solutions to most social and environmental problems that already exist, but these ideas are not yet accessible for wide replication and often remain small scale. Funders (e.g. corporates, foundations) are putting more finance into communities, but it does not flow to proven solutions and is inaccessible to most people. People are craving more purpose and connection but only a small percentage are empowered to drive change in communities. We make proven innovation and grant finance accessible to everyone can mobilise millions of new local leaders and teams on the most urgent social and environmental issues. By 2030 we want to generate abundance and impact for 250 000 million people in communities, distributing 3.5 billion euro in community funds, through over 400 000 replications of social innovations.

Please give information about the key objectives of your initiative in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience for people (through design, positive emotions and cultural benefits) and how these have been met. Please highlight how the initiative can be exemplary in this context.
Our platform makes proven community driven social innovation scalable globally in months. This gives communities across the world access to some of the best social and environmental innovations so they can have a meaningful impact on the issues that matter most. This also unlocks those funders looking to maximise impact at scale on the issues and regions they care about. All scalable innovation are tested through our due diligence process, where we verify that adequate support and resources are made available to communities to communities in an agile, sustainable and cost-effective manner.By creating a unique ecosystem for the best innovations, funders and local changemakers to drive social impact the platform has the potential to create a network effect to fuel future growth. The product experience should encourage users to return to ChangeX for future community funds, involving new networks and contacts with the knowledge that the platform is the most efficient way to achieve impact.
At the community level, people are craving more purpose and connection. Driving change on an important local issue is an ideal way to derive both purpose and connection, but only a small percentage of people are currently driving change in communities (~5%). The demand is there, the issues are many, but driving change can be inaccessible. Most people don’t have access to the knowledge or resources to make it happen. As outlined, most proven innovations are not yet accessible for wide replication. Grant finance, even in very small amounts, are almost exclusively for registered non profits or equivalents which means >95% of people can’t apply. By making proven innovations and grant finance accessible to everyone, we can mobilise millions of new local teams on the issues that matter.

Please give information about the key objectives of your initiative in terms of inclusion (ranging from accessibility and affordability for all to inclusive governing systems, design for all principles or new societal models) and how these have been met. Please highlight how the initiative can be exemplary in this context.
Inclusion is at the heart of what we do. Focusing and prioritising communities that need it the most, we create and connect a network of Innovation Partners across the world, curating portfolios of social and environmental ideas aligned with the SDGs and our 5 core themes which include: Diversity Equity & Inclusion, Nature & Resources, Education, Health & Wellbeing, Culture & Heritage. Our due diligence process and portfolio ensure that grassroots diversity and inclusion is ensured to fullfil our vision of empowering communities and have all communities we cooperate with thrive. For instance, piloting the Lego foundation Build a World of Play movement for the next five years, we aim to grow and sustain a social movement that values and advocates for learning through play as essential to children’s empowerment and holistic development, in the safest way. To support The Play Movement, ChangeX has designed the Community Play Challenge to activate communities around proven LtP innovations such as Playworks (see London Play Challenge example in partnership with the Real Play Coalition). The Community Play Challenges are designed to empower communities to make their world a better playground, building awareness and activating key audiences, including parents, caregivers and educators behind proven play innovations in communities. To fulfill this commitment we aim at expanding our activity not only to Europe but also to United States, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, Rwanda among others.

Please explain the way citizens benefiting from or affected by the initiative and civil society have been/will be involved in the initiative and what has been/will be the impact of this involvement on the initiative
We love to partner with businesses who share our goals of creating more healthy, sustainable and powerful communities, who embrace their social responsibility and commit to creating value for all stakeholders - including their employees, customers, suppliers and communities - rather than simply maximizing value for their shareholders. We are excited to support that commitment by empowering teams to accelerate their social impact in the communities where they do business. We aim to build partnerships based on mutual trust and respect where ChangeX can become an integral part of your community engagement strategy while, on the other hand, your impact goals are the guiding star for our business strategy. Here are some trades we specifically value in our partners:
Community mindset - They care about community in an authentic way, see themselves as part of the communities where they do business (as corporate citizens) and thrive when those communities thrive.
Employee engagement - They treat their own employees fair and respectfully and want to empower them to be happier community members in their workplace and neighbourhoods.
Sustainability - They put sustainability at the heart of their business strategy and work to reduce their own negative impact rather than just looking for ways to offset it.
Global Goals - They have a vision of how to contribute to the UN’s Global Goals
Impact focus - They lead their social impact efforts with a genuine interest in the issues we tackle and people we work with. That reflects in their impact KPIs driving decisions ahead of KPIs on brand recognition or license to operate.
By operating with these partners we have reached and activated already over

Please explain how different stakeholders at various levels (local, regional, national, European) were engaged in the design and implementation of the initiative.
ChangeX brings together all key stakeholders for every community to thrive. Communities are craving more purpose and connection as they are often powerless to address local issues that matter without access to proven innovation, finance or connections to build teams. Taking action often implies the risk of duplicating already existing solutions or replicating inefficiencies. ChangeX provides funding and support to start impactful projects in communities, that can start proven ideas through partner funding. Corporations want to scale funding and impact but are often not clear on the best approach to use; in house teams are constrained and internal/external tools are limited, inefficient processes, weak impact reports and/or works with sub-optimal partners to deliver impact. Through ChangeX they can fund the themes and regions they care most about, with impact, and at scale in multiple locations and languages. Lastly social innovators, that often encounter difficulties scaling their projects can easily find local teams and funding to scale your innovation through ChangeX.

Please explain which disciplines and/ or knowledge fields were reflected in the design and implementation of your initiative. Please explain how representatives of these different fields interacted with each other, and what the added value of this process was
The world’s urgent social and environmental challenges require mass action in every community, but only a small percentage are acting (>5%) Why? Communities are under resourced and disempowered - very few people have access to grant finance, or to proven innovations. Through the collaboration with the Lego Foundation, ChangeX became the pilot for the implementation of the The Play Movement initiative that aims to grow and sustain a social movement that values and advocates for learning through play as essential to children’s empowerment and holistic development. To further build process Lego Foundation and ChangeX are leading an impact campaign with the ambition of “Making the world a playground”.
This umbrella campaign is designed to actively engage partners and communities (families and children)globally in driving change, reshape norms related to learning through play and, critically, continue to build a stronger external ecosystem for the sustainable long term growth of The Play Movement. Innovations that cultivate Learning through Play (LtP) and the breadth of skills already exist, such as those by Playful Learning Landscapes, but these innovations are not yet accessible for wide replication in communities, leading to wasteful reinvention or inaction. By making proven innovations and starter finance easily accessible to communities, ChangeX has mobilised thousands of new teams driving local
impact on various issues that matter. FIRST LEGO League is one example - replicated by 27 teams across four countries in the past year, impacting 567 children, and funded by Microsoft and Amazon .

Please highlight the innovative character of the initiative, when compared to mainstream actions in the field of the initiative
ChangeX advantages vary relative to different competitors, but include some combination of being able to work across multiple themes, geographies, languages, working with proven solutions, flexible fund types and governance, solid user experience and quality and impact reporting. For corporations, in house teams regularly manage complex processes while other companies use third parties to reduce part of the administrative work. e.g. due diligence and payments . ChangeX is the only impact initiative that provides due diligence, manages complex fund management, engages communities, and makes grants and small grants accessible to them globally in a fast, transparent, agile and impactful way.

Please describe which elements of your initiative could be replicated or transferred to other places, groups of beneficiaries and contexts. This may involve, for example, aspects of the methodology, technology, processes, products, learnings, etc.
Our business model is based on the power of replicating proven ideas into communities that would have otherwise difficulties accessing innovation. ChangeX partners with social innovators to connect them with local change makers and funding to scale proven ideas globally. We focus on achieving positive impact around climate, education, inclusion and health challenges in alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The purpose of our partnership is to actively contribute to the strategic growth and educational, social and environmental impact of both Parties through the replication of ideas by communities. Communities globally receive funding, resources and support by the social innovators to start and accomplish projects locally, replicating proven, positive impact at scale. For instance, in our collaboration with the Lego foundation, we have designed the Community Play Challenge to activate communities around proven Learning through Play innovations such as Playworks (see London Play Challenge example in partnership with the Real Play Coalition). The Community Play Challenges are designed to empower communities to make their world a better playground, building awareness and activating key audiences, including parents, caregivers and educators behind proven play innovations in communities. We propose to deliver a series of Community Play Challenges to all priority countries for the LEGO
Foundation and relevant partners. A research run found common challenges to countries including: lack of space outside of the home/school; lack of free time for kids outside of school/studying/chores; and gaps in understanding the value of learning through play among parents and caregivers and how to create opportunities for children to experience and benefit from it. We have experience of overcoming similar challenges, which will inform our detailed project plans. We have worked with more than 75 social innovators, ensuring their projects can be successfully replicated.

Please describe the methodology or approach used in your initiative.
Our theory of change is clearly defined: our goal is to empower 20 million teams to improve life for communities for 1 billion people impacted by 2030. The impact we want to achieve is to have every community thriving. We want to achieve it by activating 20 million teams, spreading over 1000 ideas and mobilising over 5 billion euro. We believe that every community needs purpose and connection to increase the leadership, innovation capacity and resources as foundational elements for thriving communities and supporting the most disadvantaged.

Please explain what kind of global challenges the initiative addresses by providing local solutions
In order to address the world’s biggest challenges such as climate change, racism, isolation, loneliness, or health risks such as obesity we believe we need to unlock more power in local communities. We need to use technology more creatively and accelerate the spread of the best ideas along with the knowledge and the financial resources to empower community leaders to tackle issues at the local level. ChangeX connects people with proven ideas for strengthening communities and makes it easy to start by providing the necessary resources and knowledge. In order to achieve this mission, ChangeX is seeking partnerships with organisations and companies who share those beliefs and want to invest in communitiy-driven change. Our impact as a service model allows partners to choose the projects they’d like to spread in a specific region for a certain amount of funding. ChangeX finds people to lead those projects and distributes funding to them. Backed by the UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, ChangeX committed to bring the best ideas to 1 billion people by 2030, which means mobilising 20 million new projects around the UN’s Global Goals by 2030.

Please detail the scope of progress in the implementation of the initiative. This can include already demonstrated results/outputs related to the chosen Prizes category, and the already achieved benefits from the initiative for direct and indirect beneficiaries. This can also include a development plan of the initiative, with a particular attention to the steps envisaged in the year following the application, and including envisaged results and benefits from the initiative
ChangeX has 20 funding partners, supporting 20,000 community projects, scaling 100 proven ideas, directly impacting 1 million and indirectly reaching 200+ million people to date. We are targeting 5x growth by 2025, rapidly scaling our ecosystem of changemakers, social innovators and funding partners, supporting more community projects and delivering more global impact.

Please provide documents that demonstrate the maturity level of the initiative and commitment to implement the initiative in practice (e.g.: evaluation report, final or mid-term initiative report, certification, publications, building permit, grant agreement, letter of support, partnership agreement, etc.)
PDF
PDF
- pdf-1-15730.pdf
- pdf-1-15730_0.pdf
If relevant, please describe how your initiative contributes to developing new competences, especially in the context of the European competence framework on sustainability.
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By submitting your application you confirm that you are the copyright owner of the images provided and that they can be used by the European Commission for the purposes of promoting the New European Bauhaus on all platforms (websites, print, social media and other).
Yes

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Yes

By submitting this application, I declare that I am not related to the entities subject to EU restricted measures under Article 29 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and subject to Article 215 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU)1, and entities covered by Commission Guidelines No 2013/C 205/05), which are not eligible to participate in any capacity.
Yes

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that you assume sole liability in the event of a claim relating to the activities carried out in the framework of the contest, that the proposed initiative has not been proposed for the New European Bauhaus Prizes in any other category or strand and that it has not been subject to any type of investigation, which could lead to a financial correction because of irregularities or fraud.
Yes

By submitting your application, you guarantee that you are the author or have the rights to proceed with the application and to authorise the use of the initiative and that you have obtained any necessary consents, licenses or assignments from third parties and included copyright notices when necessary
Yes

By submitting your application, you understand that all the applications that meet the eligibility requirements will be shared for the purposes of the selection processes, and notably published on the secured platform prizes.new-european-bauhaus.eu and for the purposes of the promotion of these on the New European Bauhaus website and/or other European Commission communication channels. In this sense, the applications would be widely available. Applicants should ensure that they present their initiatives, initiative, in such a way that they could be shared without giving rise to intellectual property related concerns. If your submission is selected as one of the finalists, it will additionally be shared for the purpose of the public vote that will take place. The European Union is granted a licence to use and share your application with the general public and the official external experts for the purposes of the selection process, including the voting. The European Union has the right to use the images and visual materials and the description provided in the application for communication purposes related to the contest and beyond. Rights granted comprise the right to store, reproduce, display, publish and communicate or distribute copies in electronic or digital format, including, but not only, through the internet. Unless you have disclosed your name, the European Commission has no obligation to share your name when using or disseminating your contribution to the public. The European Union cannot be held responsible in case any submitted initiative, initiative is found to infringe third party’s rights. The European Union shall be neither responsible for the use that third parties may do of the applications or related content.
Yes

By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you read and understand that the ‘Guide to Applicants’ of the NEB Prizes 2023, available online in the website of the NEB Prizes 2023, is an integral part of this application form and that it must therefore be observed when completing and submitting your application.
Yes