WITH THE “YOU IMAGINE, WE REALIZE” COMPETITION THAT HAS LEFT ITS EIGTH YEAR BEHIND, KKB HOSTED THE INNOVATIVE IDEAS OF HUNDREDS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS THAT WILL SHAPE THE FUTURE.

In 2020, KKB organized the seventh edition of the social innovation ideas contest, “You Imagine, We Realize,” which was implemented for the first time in 2013 to raise awareness of social responsibility and increase sensitivity towards social issues among university students. This year, the contest took on a social innovation focus in line with the requirements of our era.

In the eighth year of the “You Imagine, We Realize” competition, which started in 2013 with the aim of raising awareness of university students on social responsibility issues and their sensitivity to social problems, KKB brought together innovative ideas in different categories. The “You Imagine, We Realize” Social Innovation Project Ideas contest was open for applications from university students between 1 November 2020 and 10 February 2021. Around 1,000 project applications were received regarding agriculture, health, and financial literacy during the application period. Of a total of 743 project applications from 64 different universities throughout Turkey, the winner of the First Prize was the “Let Pollination and Nature Transform” project, which brings together farmers and beekeepers and aims to enable farmers to procure bees from beekeepers. Nearly 10,000 applications have so far been submitted for the Social Innovation Project Ideas Contest, which was launched in 2013 and has continued to attract growing interest from university students each year. The semi-final and final stages of the “You Imagine, We Realize” social innovation project ideas contest were held online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the thousands of valuable creative ideas, projects qualifying for the top 100 joined the “back to entrepreneurs” online platform and passed the necessary steps to reach the final phase to further develop their projects. Pre-evaluation interviews with these 100 projects were conducted on our online system. The top ten finalists held mentoring meetings for three weeks with the KKB Manager assigned to them. After the mentoring phase, the videos prepared by the finalists to present their projects were delivered to the jury members along with the project documentation. Following evaluation from a jury, the winners were awarded TRY 30,000 for the first place prize, TRY 20,000 for the second-place prize, TRY 15,000 for the third place prize and TRY 10,000 as the special Findeks prize. Other project owners to reach the finals received a TRY 1,000 Special Jury Award and obtained a certificate having completed the enterprise program.