GreenInPloy

Inspiration

We want to foster an inclusive and regenerative economy that helps transition toward the EU Green Deal. We believe that Coronavirus showed us all that we need a different path for the future. Thus, we would like to link unemployment and food security needs in a sustainable chain that would not only get us back where we were, but also progress towards a greener and more sustainable economy

What it does

We are starting a social enterprise that will link up youth (through youth organisations, sixth form colleges and universities) in Cambridge, UK and Barcelona, Spain with local companies working in food supply. This is done by initially gathering a database of interested employers and youth institutions. We would like to have an online platform that links the skills needed, while also provide training to achieve this bridge. At a later time, we will charge a per hire fee to the employer for matching them with appropriate workers.

How we built it

We tried to be creative, while also analyzing which solutions have already been working for sustainable transitions. We were trying to fill the gaps of the platforms we have seen, with the new needs that Coronavirus has created. Now that we have the project and our clear objectives, we will contact organisations in Barcelona and Cambridge and create a database of youth organisations and employers. We will analyse which skills can be bridged to best fill the supply gap.

Challenges we ran into

How to connect youth and employers without running into GDPR problems. We will get around this by contacting instead the institutions that the youth are associated with.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Coming up with a final project that has a social purpose with a sustainable perspective that we believe can rapidly generate profit. We believe this would turn into a social enterprise that would reinvest its profit into the platform in order to enhance the training available, and increase the number of youth and employers that we can link up.

What we learned

The importance of having a clear mission. Finding solutions that are feasible is not easy. It all starts with the framing of the problem, which allows yourself to focus on specific priorities of what you believe should be changed. Then, it is more about analyzing the feasibility for change, and valuing the tools and network that you already have to strengthen the solutions you propose. Leadership skills combined with an open-minded vision which takes risks is also necessary.

As we are from various disciplines and from different countries we found many ideas, but also that each of them takes responsibility and time. It takes both creativity and leadership to build a project, but also open-mindedness and commitment to implement it. Thus, by analyzing the different possibilities and alternatives we noticed that one weekend is not enough. We now have an idea we can work on, and thus we want to continue working on it to be able to implement this solution.

What's next for GreenInPloy

Creating a database that indicates all the youth organisations we will contact in both Barcelona and Cambridge and the same for local companies in the food chain. We will contact these organisations at the beginning of next week.

This contact will enable us to determine (for the employers) a) if, and how much, demand exists in these local food supplying institutions for young labour b) requirements for labourers c) what kind of training might be required, and if this could be offered via a portal

This contact will enable us to determine (for unemployed youth) a) if, and how much, demand exists in these youth organisations for short term work b) typical skill sets c) what kind of jobs will they be attracted to

We will attempt to prove the viability of our model by linking at least 20 employers and youth within 2 weeks of commencing the hackathon. Provided this proof of concept is successful, we will upscale the project by creating a platform on which employers can post job offerings. the first 100 food supply companies will be able to post on our platform free of charge.