The National Youth Institute (Injuve) launched this Friday the public contest “Potentiate Our Innovation” (Poni), aimed at “fostering entrepreneurial culture, assisting in the development of their skills and strengthening the talent” of young entrepreneurs and innovators from all over the world. the country.
“We enthusiastically support this Injuve initiative. It seems to us that the national State should take a look at these issues: ‘self-employment’, startups (English name that refers to companies created from technological and business innovations), on what what this new way of generating work means. And it seems to us that keeping an eye on the issues that really concern young people is very necessary,” said Lammens in the Zero+Infinito building, located in Ciudad Universitaria, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood de Nuñez, where the public tender was launched.
El Poni intends to promote two categories of projects. One of them was called “Innovative Technological Solutions”, which aims at proposals that improve production processes in different industries, services, commerce and other sectors.
The other category, called “Innovative Solutions of a social and environmental nature”, focuses on proposals that solve problems of people and/or communities. Among them, he mentions: leisure, health, education, home, connectivity, social inclusion, energy transition, global warming, improvement of processes to reduce the carbon footprint, implementation of environmental monitoring systems and circular economy.
In both cases, the initiative of the national State aims at projects that are not yet in the commercialization stage or in operation, and initiatives that have a prototype or are underway.
El Poni targets young people between the ages of 18 and 29, SMEs and cooperatives in whose corporate composition more than 50% of the members are people of the same age group.
It will reward up to four winning projects with $2 million, two for each of the categories.
Lammens characterized the initiative presented by Injuve as a “disruptive policy”. And he said: “From a few months to now that has to do with addressing the problems that really change the lives of young people and this, without a doubt, is one of them.”
“The national contest for all entrepreneurs is aimed at technologies and social impact,” explained the executive director of Injuve, Julia Epstein, to Télam.
“Poni wants to create a community and for kids to feel part of this labor system, and Argentina is full of talent,” Epstein said.
Meanwhile, the Chief of Staff of the Undersecretary for Entrepreneurial Development, Camila Carra, expressed the “accompaniment” of that organization “to the development of young people’s talent so that they can present their ideas and become entrepreneurs and SMEs.”
“We -he added to this agency- are going to make the selection of these ventures, and then we will give courses and training to the finalists.”
Santiago (29), an engineering student at the National University of San Martín (Unsam), said that “I came to join Poni with a project related to hydraulics and water management, which I have had in mind for a long time with a friend, and it seems super important to me to be able to count on the support and resources”.
All the teams registered for the competition will be invited to participate in the Young IT Fair that will be held in Tecnópolis from April 19 to 23 to participate in training, experiences exchange spaces and talks with relevant actors from the technology and innovation sector. .
In addition to Lammens, Epstein and Carra, the president of the Empretec Foundation, Adrian Lebendiker, was present at the event.
