Well City Challenge: Community Solutions for Millennial Health

Deadline: 30-Nov-20

The Economy League of Greater Philadelphia is joining forces with Independence Blue Cross to launch the Well City Challenge – a social impact challenge to engage and support everyday innovators with new creative ideas for addressing Philadelphia’s millennial health and mental health challenges.

All programming will be virtual, to comply with CDC regulations. The challenge will give preference to ideas that embrace the core values of creativity, collaboration, diversity, inclusiveness, and community orientation. The Challenge is open to individuals, community groups, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and social enterprises. All backgrounds and levels of experience are welcome to submit millennial health or mental health ideas related to three themes.

Thematic Areas

Community & Social Connection: The challenge is seeking ideas on how to experience community and social connection. The ideas could be through technology and social media or outdoor activities that are compliant with social distancing.
Food & Nutrition: The challenge is seeking ideas for collaborative, community-oriented ventures that capitalize on the intimate relationship between food and health to address millennial health and mental health in Philadelphia.
Mind/Body: Because engagement in physical activity and mindfulness are closely tied to health outcomes, the challenge is looking for innovative, collaborative solutions that expand millennial participation in physical activity and mindfulness practices.

Award Information

The Well City Challenge will support community solutions for millennial health and mental health through incubator workshops, a pitch competition, mentorship, accelerator, over $50,000 in prizes and an additional $50,000 in seed investments.

How the Well City Challenge Works?

Step one: The Call for Ideas;
Step two: The Social Venture Incubator;
- January 2021: The Well City Challenge finalists will participate in a multi-week incubator comprised of training workshops and mentorship. During these workshops, expert advisors from the Economy League network will help teams refine their concepts and prepare brief pitches. Finalists will also receive support to create compelling crowdfunding campaigns for their ideas and solicit donations.
Step three: Pitch Competition;
- Early February 2021: Teams will gather at an interactive event to pitch their ideas to a panel of expert judges. Judges will select one team from each category to receive a grand prize of $10,000 to support the implementation of a pilot of their concept. There will also be People’s Choice Awards of up to $7,500 in each category.
Step four: The Impact Accelerator;
- February – June 2021: Grand Prize winners and People’s Choice Award winners will participate in an Impact Accelerator designed to help teams develop and execute rapid pilot projects, create full business plans that maximize impact and articulate paths to operational sustainability, and prepare pitches to funders for seed investment to scale their concepts. The impact accelerator will culminate with a Funder Roundtable where at least $50,000 in seed investment will be made in selected teams.
Step five: The Community Showcase;
- Early July 2021: The Economy League will convene another interactive event where teams will report out to the community on the results of their pilot projects and pitch their business plans. Seed investment will be announced publicly during this Community Showcase.

Criteria

The call for ideas process is searching for proposals for innovative solutions that can improve millennial health and mental health in the Philadelphia area from three focus areas 1) Community and Social Connection, Food and Nutrition, Mind/Body.
The challenge is particularly interested in health-related ideas that:
- Are rooted in community;
- Prioritize diversity and inclusion;
- Embrace creative approaches to collaboration and partnership;
- Can be piloted at a small scale;
- Have the potential to be replicated or scaled, and;
- Are not overly duplicative of services or programs already in place in the Philadelphia area.
Application Requirements:
- The submission supports physical health or mental health for the millennial population, people born between 1981-1996;
- The submission provides a health solution relating to one of the three focus areas (Food /Nutrition, Community & Social Connection, Mind/Body);
- Applicants are at least 21 years of age;
- Team submissions are comprised of no more than four people;
- Either the individual applicant or if applying as a team – at least one applicant team member, lives or works in the Philadelphia area (comprised of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties);
- Employees of Independence Blue Cross and its parents, subsidiaries, affiliates are ineligible to apply to the Well City Challenge.