The Oceanográfica: Divulgación Educación y Ciencia S.L. project, led by Cristina Fernández Gil, has won the Women Startup Europe Awards, in a competition in which numerous innovation projects carried out by women were presented. The awards ceremony was held on 11 November at the closing ceremony of the Women Impact Summit, part of the Afrimac 2 project.
This project, inspired by the initiative of Wangari Mataii in Kenya, promotes the creation of green jobs favouring the rural economy. Its main objective is the implementation of pilot examples of green areas managed by citizens in some residential neighbourhoods of the Canary Islands, as an example of a change of model in municipal planning and management.
The aim is to promote a culture of care for nature and people by transforming abandoned and degraded spaces into green areas planted and managed by citizens, to support the social demand to live in an environment that is greener, more sustainable, healthier and more resilient to change.
Currently, as Fernandez Gil tells us, “The island and the municipality are facing great environmental and humanitarian challenges in which we must weave new social networks and recover environmental health to overcome the constant changes and crises that are coming and are expected to come. We need to strengthen the resilience of society and the environment for which we must work in coordination with administrations, technicians and citizens.”
For this, Oceanográfica aims to improve the governance of citizens by helping to change their immediate environment, promoting awareness and generating social fabric to improve the environmental and social resilience of neighbourhoods, and the creation of green spaces on an island that lacks them in urban and school environments.
Oceanográfica will be the project that will receive the prize worth €5,000, as well as all the training and dissemination of its project, promoting the development and further development of the project.
Congratulations Cristina!
Video of Oceanográfica’s presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8bblKQ2DKM
About Woman Impact Summit (WIS)
Woman Impact Summit (www.womanimpactsummit.com) is an international initiative within the AFRIMAC 2 project to share different ways of addressing economic opportunities, visibility and access for women of all backgrounds, with participants, regional leaders, entrepreneurs and businesswomen working on special initiatives for women on both sides of the Atlantic.
About AFRIMAC 2
AFRIMAC 2 (www.afrimac.org) is a programme for business, technological, entrepreneurial and innovative exchange in areas of high economic impact between the Canary Islands and West Africa. The main objective is to improve the internationalisation of companies in the cooperation area through the creation of networks and the generation of a knowledge environment with a gender focus.
About Women For Tech
Women For Tech is the Finnova Foundation‘s initiative to support innovation, disruptive projects and public-private partnerships for women. They support different projects such as Finnova-Technovation Girls Challenges to promote STEAM careers in young people or projects to promote female entrepreneurship.
About Finnova Foundation
Finnova is a foundation working for the promotion and development of innovation and entrepreneurship at EU level. Based in Brussels, it operates through collaborations and partnerships in all EU countries. Finnova’s experience in leading European project communication and dissemination activities is combined with a strong proven track record in start-ups and business support programmes, such as accelerators, incubators and selection and award ceremonial events.