MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 2018
The Urban Innovation Challenge: Citypreneurs is an urban start-up competition for young entrepreneurs to propose business solutions that accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. Co-hosted by UN ESCAP, WFUNA, Seoul Metropolitan Government and organized by the Seoul Digital Foundation, the competition was held from 19-20 September in Seoul.
More than 150 teams from 65 countries applied to the event, out of which 30 were selected under three themes: Health Tech, Ed Tech, and Transportation & Environment.
The Grand Prize went to Dobrain, which produces affordable online educational content to aid cognitive development in children. The First-Place award winners were: EIDWare, a company that developed Korea’s first voice recognition engine for the disabled, and Liberty, an energy firm specializing in wind turbines. The winning teams were rewarded with a grant totaling 22,000 USD to carry out their projects.
The start-up challenge was held side-by-side with a policy dialogue that involved city policymakers, UN experts, startups, and investors to find tangible and realistic ways to enable youth entrepreneurship and remove limiting factors in the impact venture ecosystem.
As a follow-up event, a Demo Day with the three winning teams was held on 13 December. More than 30 investors and mentors were present for the investor pitch and the networking session that followed.
The Citypreneurs competition is planned to continue in 2018, so stay tuned here!
In an effort to provide Koreans seeking to work for international organizations with up-to-date and useful information, the “15th International Career Fair: 
The UN Youth Environmental Conference, hosted by WFUNA, UNEP, and ECOMOM Korea, was held via online/offline from 1 August to 4 September, 2022.
