Entries are now open for the sixth Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Awards, supporting and celebrating inspirational young people from all over the world who have initiatives, products or services that tackle the planet’s biggest sustainability challenges.
Delivered in partnership with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and Unilever, the Awards have already reached over 5,800 inspiring young sustainability entrepreneurs and their organisations over five years, providing tailored support and funding to 37 winners to help them achieve scale for impact.
Previous entries have ranged from providing lifesaving supplies to deliver healthy babies, to machine learning technology that prevents food waste.
The world’s problems will only be solved with the ideas and talents of a new generation of leaders who are challenging business as usual. The Awards are an opportunity to support, inspire, reward and collaborate with these leaders; innovators who are the future of sustainability.
The process and prizes
This year, the Awards will recognise initiatives in three categories:
- Improve people’s health and wellbeing
- Improve the health of the planet
- Contribute to a fairer and more socially inclusive world
Through an intensive selection process overseen by CISL, eight winners are selected from thousands of entries. These eight winners are flown to Cambridge for an all-inclusive accelerator programme with CISL, delivered by experts in sustainability, entrepreneurship and scaling for impact. The winners share in €100,000, along with tailored one-to-one mentoring for 12 months.
They also gain the opportunity to pitch to a final judging panel to win the overall prize, HRH The Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize, which includes €50,000 cash.
Previous winners have gone on to:
- Win Forbes’ 30 Under 30 recognition and Acumen fellowships
- Receive visits from Unilever CEO Paul Polman and be mentioned in speeches by Barack Obama
- Feature on Sky News, CNN, Fast Company, and more
- Establish partnerships with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, Unilever, USAID, and more
- Rapidly scale their business and impact
The Awards are open now until 30 June.
If you know a brilliant young sustainability entrepreneur who deserves to be recognised make sure to tell them about the awards. Or if this sounds like you, then submit your application before 30 June to be in the running.
