My Nigeria. Your Nigeria? Whose Nigeria? Youth Leaders Roundtable on Reenvisioning the Nigeria identity.
October 8, 2018
The OpenGov Social Impact Challenge (OSIC) Finalists Announced.
December 8, 2019
Got an idea to solve a social challenge? Here’s an opportunity to turn your idea into real impact.
Apply for the OpenGov Social Impact Challenge
We invite application from social entrepreneurs, community leaders and change leaders to pitch an idea for a better society.
About the Challenge.
Open Gov Social Impact Challenge (OSIC) is a competition that seeks to identify practical, original and social impact ideas (especially those that promote open government, accountability and improved citizen engagement – broadly defined) promoted by emerging social entrepreneurs across Nigeria. Designed as a pilot, the program is presented as a platform that gives emerging social entrepreneurs an opportunity to showcase their solutions and access some resources (mentorship, training, and workspace) and potentially funding. Essentially, the program invites applications from social entrepreneurs to identify solutions to some of the challenges facing their communities and develop a simple, practical and possibly scalable innovation to solve that challenge. Twenty finalists will be selected by a team of experts and social entrepreneurs (ten each for Lagos and Abuja) and will be invited to a five day Bootcamp in Lagos (Civic Hive) and Abuja (eCove) where they will access an accelerated and comprehensive training to finetune their idea/solution. Ten of the finalists will then offered an opportunity to continue to develop their ideas through a complimentary 3 -6 months free workspace and access other benefits available to other community members in both CivicHive and eCove. OpenGov Social Impact Challenge (OSIC) is presented through a partnership of eCove and CivicHive – both OpenGovHub Global Affiliates with support from the Open Gov Hub, Washington DC.
Who Can Apply
Application is open to any Nigerian who has original social impact idea ( by social impact we mean any solution, idea or proposal that can solve any social problem or issue. We are particularly interested ideas/solutions that can promote open government, accountability, active citizenship – broadly defined. The broad definition means ideas/solutions don’t have to be exclusively linked to all of the themes, but only need to have some relationship and linkage with this theme. Please note that before applying, it is important that applicants certify that if selected they will be available to attend the 5day Bootcamp in Lagos/Abuja. We are open to receiving applications from different stages of development. We do not mind the scale of the solutions – local or hyperlocal – and we are open to the diverse use of technology – radio, text, print, IoT, machine learning, artificial intelligence or social media – as a channel. We are more focused on the impact on the people, the sustainability of ideas to deliver value and the unrelenting spirit of the applicant.
Benefits:
- 20 Finalists will participate in 5-day accelerated and comprehensive Boot Camp where they will learn from successful social entrepreneurs and experts, access key skills and resources that can help shape the social impact idea/venture/solutions. The Bootcamp will a variety of approaches to dive into ideas/solutions and help promoters finetune their reach and widen their understanding of the sector to develop the best approach to launching/scaling as the case may be.
- Access mentorship and membership of the community of social changemakers through the eCove/CivicHive/ Open GovHub communities.
- Exposure to a wide range of partners and collaborators that can help test and scale their ideas/solutions as the case may be.
- Finalists will as part of the Bootcamp (demo day) have an opportunity to present idea/solutions to a team of experts where feedback are received and opportunity for partnership and resourcing is presented to a selected audience of prospective partners and collaborators.
- 10 Finalists will also have the opportunity to access free workspace (up to 6months) to continue to work on ideas, access additional resources, mentorship from impact community to get the ideas of the ground.
- CivicHive&eCove does not guarantee receipt of donor/for-profit support to finalists nor success of the idea.
To Apply.
All applications must be submitted online using this link. Application is currently open and will close on November 26, 2019 (5:00p.m. WAT). Interviews may be conducted for some applications and will be done by our selected team of judges which include experienced civil society leaders, private sector experts, and ex-leads of government institutions. Finalists will be announced by November 28th, 2019. Please read the term of the participation before filling the application.
Timeline
Got Questions?
Enquiries and additional questions to be addressed to
Iyanu – info@civichive.org , +2347030281365
Abiola – abiola@citizencommons.org-+234 903 158 0 158 (WhatsApp Enabled)
About Civic Hive : Civic Hive is BudgIT’s civic innovation cultural center whose mandate is to strengthen civic innovation in Nigeria, support existing non-profits in the use of design and technology, raise new civic-tech leaders with innovative and unrelenting spirit and also provide co-working space to people and ideas that transform Nigeria. Civic Hive does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, age, sexual orientation or ethnic origins.
About eCove: Promoted by CitizenCommons,eCove is a community of social entrepreneurs and social change-makers passionate about changing the world through new ideas, innovation and collaboration. We are more than a workspace, we are an incubator, a community space, a business lounge, change-makers hub. Our community offers varying opportunities for emerging and established social entrepreneurs, civic leaders and social innovators to find innovative approaches of solving societal challenges, anchored on the core values of active citizenship, accountability, transparency, collaboration enabled by technology.
