Together with Junior Achievement Young Enterprise (JA-YE) Europe we’ve just announced the winner of the HP Responsible Business Ideas Contest: The German student company ‘solAround’.

The secondary school students from Peine were selected for their initiatives to promote the use of solar power in their community. Among other things, the team designed a portal to introduce investors to  people interested in renting out their roofs. They also organised a solar fair, produced a magazine and designed a game. You can read more about the students and the ideas contest in JA-YE’s announcement.

I’ve been reviewing the submissions made for the HP Responsible Business Ideas Contest for the last three years and I have to say I was extremely impressed with the quality of work this year. It was quite difficult to select a winner given the wealth of ideas and business concepts that incorporated social and environmental criteria.

We had more than 300 student companies and individuals participate in the award which has been running for three years in Europe. JA-YE formed a jury to preselect the best entries for each of the 10 participating countries - Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia and Slovakia. I was part of the HP Employee Jury that selected the Top 10 entries shown below:

1. solAround                Germany
2. Peace Tree              Israel
3. Watt                           Portugal
4. Better Windows      Russia
5. Petra Systems        Poland
6. Equalite                   Slovakia
7. Navem                     Romania
8. Ekoefekt                  Poland
9. AquaBiz                   Russia
10. Kaseton                  Poland 

Ulrike Haug, CSR Stakeholder Programmes