Heroes of the Homeland Upper Franconia 2022: Half-time of the application phase!

The aim of Adalbert-Raps-Stiftung is to sustainably promote social participation in Upper Franconia through their social commitment. Under this premise, the third round of the competition of the initiative "Heroes of Upper Franconia", whose underlying concept was developed in cooperation with the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Bayreuth, also started at the beginning of April 2022. Under the motto "Creating impact together instead of awarding existing projects!", the Adalbert-Raps-Stiftung is looking for non-profit organisations that want to solve social challenges related to the region of Upper Franconia and are willing to jointly expand and further develop their commitment within the framework of comprehensive coaching and workshop offers. In addition to the content-related support, the chance to receive financial support also offers participants real added value. Non-profit organisations in Upper Franconia have until 8 May to apply to Adalbert-Raps-Stiftung to take part in the Heroes Programme 2022.

Caption: Prof. Dr Eva Jakob, Junior Professor for Social Entrepreneurship; © Stephan Münnich

Create impact: Making a sustainable impact with a new heroine mission

Whether it is the Corona pandemic or the war in Ukraine, current world events pose great challenges for social organisations. Services can no longer be implemented in the usual way, there is a lack of capacity, members or financial resources. Old models have to be overhauled and new perspectives have to be developed. With the initiative "Heroes of Upper Franconia", which started its third round of competition at the beginning of April 2022 under the motto "Create impact together instead of awarding prizes to existing projects", Adalbert-Raps-Stiftung is addressing precisely this point. It receives valuable support from the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Bayreuth. Here, too, they are aware of the hurdles that social organisations have to overcome. "First of all, social initiatives have a great advantage: they are based on issues that are close to the heart, so that everyone involved is highly motivated to get involved. At the same time, however, they face the challenge of implementing the motivation in a targeted manner and maintaining it in the long term," says Prof. Dr. Eva Jakob, assistant professor for social entrepreneurship. "With the Hero*innen programme for the current round of the competition, we are supporting social initiatives in sharpening their vision and accordingly developing their offer so that they can help their target group even more comprehensively. The great thing is that the initiatives have the opportunity to develop further with our support. On the one hand through us and our comprehensive coaching and workshop offer, but also in networking with other organisations. In our experience, this helps with both: to implement and strengthen motivation in a targeted way."

Participate and benefit

The heroine programme for the third round of the "Heroes of the Upper Franconian Homeland" competition is divided into two phases. After the application and selection phase, the actual Heroes of Upper Franconia programme will start in June 2022 with ten selected organisations - the Heroes of Upper Franconia - in phase one, which is all about further development and networking. In addition to three obligatory heroine workshops with all organisations, the participants in this phase also have the opportunity to take part in individual heroine coaching sessions. The first phase ends on 22 October 2022 with the Heroines of the Homeland Festival. At the event, the committed participants will present their respective offerings as well as the development steps they have taken and their plans for the future to a jury and thus have the chance to qualify as one of three teams for the second phase of "Heroes of the Homeland Upper Franconia 2022". Under the heading "Work and Grow", the three most convincing organisations will then continue directly. In the one-year period from October 2022 to October 2023, the focus will be on implementing the respective offers and increasing their impact in Upper Franconia. For this purpose, the organisations will not only have the opportunity to take part in further workshops and be accompanied by coaches, but will also receive financial support in the form of unconditional hero money of up to 15,000 euros.

Last chance: Application period ends on 8 May 2022

Non-profit organisations can still apply to participate in the programme "Heroes of Upper Franconia 2022" until 8 May 2022, before the selection phase starts in mid-May. In addition to the social need and the problem-solving ability of the offer, it is above all the development potential of the project or idea and the willingness of the team to develop that are used as evaluation criteria. "We are looking for social actors who already solve or want to solve social challenges related to the region of Upper Franconia and who, above all, are willing to develop and expand their commitment together with us and our coaches in order to ultimately achieve real added value for the organisations themselves as well as for the region," says Frank Alexander Kühne, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation Adalbert-Raps-Stiftung.