Deadline: February 28, 2019.

Digital Empowerment Foundation has always been dedicated towards finding ICT solutions for the under-served communities to make a fairer, more inclusive India. It is extending its same motto of communicating and enduing masses , this time “with social media” by initiating “Socialmedia4empowerment” portal where social media evangelists can gather under one umbrella to connect and communicate with the world with a trust that “may be it takes time, but changes do happen”.

The program is unique because it works out concrete ways to increase understanding, cooperation and peace among the region and give social media practitioners a platform to scale up their dreams. These awards benefit the communities with the fruit of ICT revolution through various workshops and action- oriented sessions which will prove helpful for them to gain full social inclusion and promote healthy and constructive communication among participating countries.

The main objectives of the program is to synergize efforts and dialogues on social media and how it can become an efficient tool for real work and inspire others to utilize it in bringing positive change. This awards will help to make a vast pool of talent of Social Media evangelists to share and feed knowledge so that decision making can be improved and recognize, honor and encourage best social media practices through “Social Media for Development & Change” Awards.

CATEGORIES

• The award categories are:
  • Blogging, Vlogging & Storytelling
    • This category recognises the initiatives which used blogs, vlogs and/or storytelling to successfully and effectively put across views and right messages to the desired audience.
  • Citizen Media & Journalism
    • This category acknowledges initiatives by open media enthusiasts who use social media platforms as a channel to broadcast their views, real time stories and pictures for those who are voiceless and may not have any mainstream media platform.
  • Community Mobilisation
    • This category recognizes group or community efforts and initiatives that use various platforms of social media effectively for social and developmental purposes.
  • Communication, Advocacy & Development Activism
    • This category recognizes efforts and initiatives that use social media mechanism and platforms as a tool for advocacy, building opinions and converting them into development activism. Initiatives taken to improve online safety and security associated with using social media will be nominated under this category.
  • Social Commerce, Crowdsourcing and Crowd Funding
    • This category recognizes initiatives and efforts that turned to crowdsourcing, crowd funding or crowd economy to turn their ideas into reality. This also recognises projects/organizations using social media to attract a global audience for their socio-commercial products.
  • Social Inclusion
    • This category acknowledges social media practices that include and are vocal about issues related to diversifying gender (women empowerment), LGBTIQ+, differently-abled, inclusive of religion, caste, race and ethnicity.
• Nomination forms must be filled out entirely. Judging will be scored on:
  • Content & Services: Quality of content and services delivery; relevance of content and its utility value.
  • Impact and Accessibility: Social impact & the commercial viability of the application.
  • Functionality: The user friendliness & interactive nature of the application.
  • Strategic Value: Uniqueness and comprehension value of the idea & strategy.
  • Benefit & Utility: The real beneficiaries of the Campaign/Project.
  • Cause behind the initiative: What is the major reason behind initiating the Project/Campaign?
  • Overall Experience: Challenges they came across during the execution of the Project.

ELIGIBILITY

• Any Individual, NGO/NPO, Corporates, Students, Teachers, Farmers, Startups, Corporate, Government Organizations, Mobile app Developers, Marketing experts who uses Social Media as a platform can apply.
• The Social media presence of the initiative should be minimum six months old at the time of applying.
• Nominations are welcome from the following South Asian countries: Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Afghanistan.
• There is no limitation regarding the platforms, cost or channels the projects work with.
• Entries should focus on execution and impact rather than level of reach and engagement.
• Award nominations from past year winners for the same project will not be considered.

• General Guidelines
  • There are no charges applicable for nominating any project in Social Media for Empowerment Summit and Awards.
  • There are no limitations on submitted number of Nominations from any organization i.e. One can submit more than one nomination for different projects from the same organization.
  • Any partner to Social Media for Empowerment Awards is eligible to apply for the Nomination process of any of their projects as Jury is completely independent process, irrespective of Social Media for Empowerment program stakeholders.
  • Any False information submitted about the project will immediately led to permanent disqualification of the Nominee.
  • There is no limitation regarding the platforms, cost or channels the projects work with.
  • One project shall only be submitted for one category.
  • The same project can be applied again if it is not a winning entry of past years.
  • Irrespective of the product/project language, all producer and project information must be in English.
  • Any applicant shall receive an acknowledgement mail to their email address after submitting the Nomination form successfully.
  • Any applicant may edit/modify the details in the Nomination form till the last date of accepting the Nomination form using their credentials.
  • The fields marked mandatory in nomination forms are necessary to fill by the nominee.

OFFICIAL LINK

Social Media for Empowerment