The “U-SOLVE” project has been rated top of a list of 22 funded projects in the latest ENI-CBC Med call.  The project ranked 1st out of all 198 competitive proposals that were submitted. The project will receive funding in excess of €3.2 million, and is led by the ARCA Consortium, a public-private innovation hub promoted by the University of Palermo, Italy. CyI is a major partner in this project, and the CyI Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Fabio Maria Montagnino, has been leading the application process, in his former position of General Director at ARCA.

The Joint Monitoring Committee, the decision-making body of the ENI CBC Med Programme, has approved 22 projects for funding out of the 198 proposals submitted, under the call for strategic projects. The projects, worth 78.8 million euros, have the ambition to produce long-lasting and far-reaching effects, fostering significant change in key thematic fields through synergies with the main EU, national and regional policies in the Mediterranean region. These projects gather 197 actors from the eligible territories of the 13 countries participating in the ENI CBC Med Programme, such as Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Portugal, Palestine, Spain and Tunisia.

The topics of the 22 projects approved under the strategic call for proposals have to do with start-ups development, reinforcement of Euro-Mediterranean economic clusters, technology transfer, employability of young people and women, waste management and energy efficiency.

The U-SOLVE project includes partners fron Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Jordan and Palestine. It will leverage entrepreneurship in the region towards sustainable development in urban environments. It will address the most urgent challenges relating to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Mediterranean urban communities through an open innovation approach, allowing coalitions of entrepreneurial agents of change to emerge, creating qualified jobs and economic value, while supporting the transition towards a sustainable model.

The project will result into an appropriate balance between the exploitation of innovative technologies and business models implemented by start-ups and young companies, socio-economic progress and environmental preservation, accordingly with the principles of the doughnut economy , It wants to add experimental pathways for place-based strategies of interventions on entrepreneurship, suitable for the Mediterranean countries, where the entrepreneurial energy is natively oriented towards the sustainable and integrated territorial development.

U-SOLVE’s expected results will be highly innovative:

• Start-ups and young enterprises addressing sustainable development challenges managed by / employing youth (highly educated, between 24 and 35 years old) and/or women (all ages)
• A toolbox for the implementation of an effective, SDG-driven open innovation process
• Multilevel policy recommendations for urban sustainable development strategies based on impact-oriented entrepreneurship, (iv) a Mediterranean network of stakeholders of impact-oriented entrepreneurship.

The expected results will be:

• Increased entrepreneurial culture among youth and women;
• Innovative businesses supporting SDGs in target urban areas;
• Tested tools and methodologies for sustainable urban economic development based on entrepreneurship and community participation local impact-innovation hubs either created or empowered in cities belonging to the Mediterranean area.

For more info: http://www.enicbcmed.eu/programme-funds-22-new-projects-drive-cooperation-forward-across-mediterranean or contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.