The EDUaccelerator 2022 participants presented their projects intended for pupils and students

This year, the EDUaccelerator of the Generation 3.0 programme is taking place for the fifth time. Its goal is the development of projects for pupils of Slovak primary and secondary schools.

Therefore, by participating in the EDUaccelerator, organisations will receive an individual mentor for three months – an expert in the field whose participants, based on their needs, we select according to their needs. They will also cooperate with impact measurement experts. Their task is to help organisations set a strategy for long-term measurement of the project’s impact.

In the fifth year, we are getting closer to classic business accelerators, at the end of which, only one of the organisations will receive a grant. It will be financial support of up to 30,000 euros. We are planning to help disseminate the project to schools more intensively.

Projects in the EDUaccelerator

Organisation: Centre for Community Organisation (CCO)

Project title: Schools for Democracy

Mentor: Zuzana Suchová; fundraising, marketing and PR manager; Donio

The CCO and their mentor will focus mainly on communication and visibility of the School for Democracy programme. They will also focus on obtaining resources, primarily in the business environment, which should ensure the programme’s sustainability. They will therefore work on a communication and fundraising strategy.

Organisation: DASATO (before: I Ambitious)

Project title: I Ambitious Academy

Mentor: Martina Králová; senior consultant, mentor; G-Force, SVÄG TO GO

The programme is well established and currently facing the challenge of reaching as many high school students as possible. Therefore, the organisation will create not only a dissemination strategy but also a complex fundraising strategy with the aim of financial stabilisation of key roles in the team.

Organisation: EMTEGRA

Project title: Compass

Mentor: Vanda Hlaváčková; fundraising, marketing a PR manager; freelancer

Emtegra is a start-up organisation. The team would like it to become professional, but the lack of financial resources is the barrier. Therefore, they want to develop a fundraising plan with their mentor to represent a long-term and sustainable funding strategy. They will also focus on communication, as their ambition is to build awareness of the vital role of social and emotional skills in students.

Organisation: Impact Games

Project title: Gamifactory

Mentor: Róbert Magyar; gaming expert; SuperScale

Impact Games creates educational games for schools aimed at developing 21^st-century skills. In the future, they plan to work on developing new games in-house and build partnerships with development studios. Therefore, they need to focus on the business development strategy. Thus, the main goal in which they want to move forward in the accelerator is to set up the sales model of their platform for schools.

Organisation: Slovak Debate Association (SDA)

Project title: Critical Thinking Olympiad

Mentor: Tina Ličková; senior (UX) manager; kununu

In the accelerator, the SDA wants to focus primarily on creating an online educational tool that would contribute to developing students’ critical thinking. They would also like to increase the number of students participating in this programme. Their work in the EDUaccelerator should also focus on the impact measurement of the platform’s activities.

The role of the evaluation committee

The fifth year of the EDUaccelerator also brought a change in the number of grants organisations can receive. For the first time, we are not providing each accelerator participant with a grant of 10,000 euros to disseminate the programme. Instead, we will provide an amount of up to 30,000 euros for the dissemination and development of the programme to only one selected organisation. The change of the EDUaccelerator to a competitive model also brought with it the need to create a committee to help with the selection (see the composition of the commission below).

The commission will receive action plans from all participants and monitor their progress within three months. At the closing ceremony, which will take place on the 8^th of December 2022, it will announce which organisation will receive the grant.

Criteria for selecting a supported organisation

• Potential for positive impact (Does the programme solve a problem that is important, neglected and solvable? How significantly does the intervention affect schools, teachers or students? What is the added value compared to the existing competition?),
• Impact potential (Is the result achievable in terms of organisational capacity? Is it tangible for schools/teachers/students to absorb and use the programme? What is the estimated number of teachers/students the programme can reach?),
• Implementation team behind the programme and experience of the organisation (Number of people behind the programme, their expertise, commitment, sustainability),
• The possible impact of support from the Pontis Foundation on the organisation (Financial efficiency of the proposed solution).

Members of the committee

Andrea Basilová, Sensoneo

Andrea and her husband Martin founded the original Slovak project Sensoneo, which enables waste to be managed more efficiently, with greater consideration for the environment and the quality of life in the town. Andrea is responsible for overall online and offline communication, thus continuing her previous professional work.

Within the committee, she will also use her experience in building strategic partnerships.

Miroslava Hapalová, Director of the Department of Curriculum, Inclusion and National Minorities at the National Institute of Youth Education.

In the past, Miroslava was the director of the State Pedagogical Institute. She also worked in the non-profit sector, namely at the People in Need and To dá rozum project, which focused on the quality of education in Slovakia. The field she focused on in her research was the diversity of learners’ needs and the ability of the system to respond to them. Mirka will help the committee assess projects’ importance and applicability in the educational environment.

Heliodor Macko, SEAK Energetics

Heliodor co-founded and spent 15 years building the software company Visicom, which (when it had a branch in the US and Israel and 90 employees) was bought by an American investor. Now he is trying to repeat it with the Prešov company SEAK, where he works as a director. In 2021, he received a gold plaque from the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic for his extraordinary contribution to promoting Slovakia’s interests and cooperation in economic diplomacy.

His experience building companies and validating business models will be a valuable contribution to the committee.

Norbert Maur, senior project manager of the Pontis Foundation.

Noro has been working at the Pontis Foundation for 14 years. He has been leading the Generation 3.0 team for the last six years. He is also currently developing tools to support social innovations – impact measurement, accelerators, and mapping of social innovators. He also co-founded the humnokemp.sk project, which focuses on supporting camping.

As part of the EDUaccelerator, he will monitor the possible impact of support from the Pontis Foundation on the organisation.

Ondrej Smolár, Soitron

Ondrej is one of the founders of Soitron. As vice chairman of the board and technical director, he helped build the technical department and the first IT delivery centre in Slovakia. He is currently the chairman of Soitron’s board of directors and, since 2007, also its executive director.

He will use his many years of corporate experience to assess organisational teams’ viability.