Deadline: 31 August 2020
The World Summit Awards are a unique awards system, selecting and promoting local digital innovation with high impact on improving society. Is a non-monetary award system with a focus on sustainable knowledge transfer through a worldwide network. Winners benefit not from a one-time financial reward, but a lifelong partnership and integration.
The World Summit Awards are also a nomination based award system. To participate you need to be nominated by a WSA National Expert as the best national digital application in one of the 8 categories. The nominations to WSA are possible through national contests and national Expert panel selection. Each country can only nominate one project/solution per category.
Through this high-level selection system, please be aware that every country has their own deadlines for the call. The generally communicated WSA deadline is the timeframe of the global call and communicates the last possible date of a nomination by the national expert panel.
WSA Young Innovators
The World Summit Awards promotes and awards also young innovators, who developed a digital application tackling the UN SDGs. The WSA Young Innovators is a special recognition for young social entrepreneurs under 26 years of age, using ICTs to take action on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).
Together with the WSA winners of each year, they are honored as outstanding digital innovation with social impact.
The WSA Young Innovators Award is an open call. The participation in the WSA Young Innovators is open to any entrepreneur, company, student group or project team – at least one of the founding members and the majority of the team must be under the age of 26 (born on or after January 1, 1994).
Categories
WSA categories reflect the UN WSIS action lines and are updated regularly to meet the development of the markets. For the edition of the World Summit Awards 2020 the categories are:
- GOVERNMENT & CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT – services | open data | democratic participation
- HEALTH & WELL BEING – medical care | sport | lifestyle
- LEARNING & EDUCATION – knowledge | science | skills
- ENVIRONMENT & GREEN ENERGY – climate | sustainable resources | agriculture
- CULTURE & TOURISM – heritage | entertainment | subcultures
- SMART SETTLEMENTS & URBANIZATION – mobility |productive work | sustainable living
- BUSINESS & COMMERCE – innovative services | security | finance | marketing
- INCLUSION & EMPOWERMENT – diversity | gender | justice | human rights
Benefits
The World Summit Awards are a non-monetary award system with a focus on sustainable knowledge transfer through a worldwide network. This means that winners benefit not from a one time financial reward, but a lifelong partnership and integration.
Winners of the World Summit Awards Benefits
- Invitation to the WSA Global Congress including:
- Pitching seminars
- 4 minute pitch session in front of an international audience during the Congress
- A program of especially crafted workshops for the winners
- Invitation to the prestigious award ceremony and Gala night
- Board and lodging for the durance of the Congress
- Eye to eye exchange with speakers, jurors and international guests
- Integration into a network of internationally recognized digital content developers
- Access to the WSA community of global experts and industry leaders in over 180 countries
- Interaction with world-renowned sponsors and partners of the WSA community
- Workshops specially shaped for the winners needs
- A videoclip highlighting the winners projects
- Special placement on WSA website, youtube channel and social media promotion
- Long-term coverage within WSA editorial channels
Nominees’ Benefits
A nomination for the World Summit Award is already a win – these are the rewards
- More coverage on your product. WSA provides nominees with press templates to help them to gain the attention of national media with support of the WSA national experts
- World Summit Award nominee seal to use on websites, social media channels and publications
- Opportunity to receive feedback from the jurors.
- Being nominated for the World Summit Award means to be the best in the respective country in one of 8 categories. The experience has shown that this qualification can immensely improve outreach.
Rules and Conditions
- General Contest Rules
- The World Summit Award (WSA) focusses on digital applications with a strong impact on society in 8 different WSA categories, reflecting the UN SDGs.
- By submission of a project, producers accept the rules of the WSA contests as stated on this page and in the WSA Contest Database.
- All submitters to WSA have to abide by the rules and regulations mentioned in the UN Declaration on Human Rights. Submissions therefore which encourage war, the exercise of violence, fraud, racism or discrimination will not be accepted and eliminated. Similarly, submissions that violate international copyright provisions will be excluded.
- WSA cannot be held liable for accepted submissions and their contents and rights.
- Applications and submission of projects to the WSA
- Taking part in the WSA is only eligible by being nominated by a WSA national expert.
- Registration, including submitting project information, must be completed online via the WSA contest database.
- Submitting a product to the evaluation and selection process does by no means entitle a producer to any benefits. There is no way of challenging this decision legally.
- Only submitted and fully filled in applications will be considered by the WSA Jury.
- Submission is free of charge.
- Participation and submission of projects to the WSA young innovators
- The participation in the WSA Young Innovators is restricted to any entrepreneur, company, student group or project team, where at least one of the founding members and the majority of the team is under the age of 26 (born on or after January 1, 1994) from any of the UN and UNESCO member states.
- Registration, including submitting project information, must be completed online via the WSA contest database.
- Submitting a product to the evaluation and selection process does by no means entitle a producer to any benefits. There is no way of challenging this decision legally.
- Only submitted and fully filled in applications will be considered by the WSA Jury.
- Submission is free of charge.
- Which projects are suitable for WSA?
- Submissions for the WSA can contain digital content applications with a clear impact on society, such as: apps, webpages, applications for wearables, kiosk installations, sms based products, mobile games and interactive mobile productions. There is no limitation regarding the platforms or channels the projects work with.
- All submissions have to be launched products. No drafts, prototypes, demonstrations or unfinished projects can be accepted. The solution needs to prove that it is a working product and demonstrate some local impact.
- All submitted products must have been completed after Jan. 1, 2018. For a project or product completed earlier, the submitters have to document significant alterations and / or improvements and / or additions have been made in the period thereafter.
- A product can only be submitted for one category. In case of multiple submissions by the same organization, company or team, each product requires a separate registration. Submissions which have been nominated in the WSA in previous years cannot be submitted again. For a project which has been already submitted before, the submitters have to document significant alterations and / or improvements and / or additions.
- WSA exploitation rights and copyrights
- By submitting a project to the WSA, producers provide the WSA office with the exploitation rights for the submitted videos, pictures and other content for non-commercial use for the promotion of the nominated product, presented in print, broad-cast and any other forms of media, as well as for events.
- The producer must own the copyright of all pictures, sounds, contents etc. related to the production of his project. All software used must be licensed.
- WSA has the right to share promotional material and information about the submitted projects with potential investors and sponsoring partners.
- WSA contest language
- The interface of the products can be in any of the United Nations official languages. All producer and project information in the WSA database must however be in English. The official language of the WSA is English and must be used in all official communication.
- Exclusion and disqualification of submissions from the WSA process
- Incomplete submissions and those not following the WSA guidelines will be withdrawn from the WSA selection process without notice. There is no legal recourse possible against the decision of disqualification for the below reasons. The WSA organizers have the right to reject submission / entry without providing any further reason and notice.
- Malfunctioning of the product during the time of the jury evaluation can lead to disqualification. Submitters are held responsible to make sure their products are functioning for Jury evaluation.
- Further withdrawal reasons are: Lack of ownership of creative rights or infringement of copyrights of others; false registration information, non-confirmation to the rules of the contest guidelines.
- Category switch
- The jury has the right to switch a submission from one category to another, if the category chosen by the producer is recognized as not suitable. A category switch is the result of a decision by jury members.
- Winners selection
- The winners will be selected from among the submissions in each category through the jury process as published on the website. No legal recourse is possible against the jury decision.
Eligibility Criteria
- WSA is open to any company, organisation or individual in any UN and UNESCO member state.
- The participation in the WSA Young Innovators is restricted to any entrepreneur, company, student group or project team, where at least one of the founding members and the majority of the team is under the age of 26 (born on or after January 1, 1994) from any of the UN and UNESCO member states.
For more information, visit https://www.worldsummitawards.org/contest/