Powered by the EU-funded H2020 SEED project, the European Silver Economy Awards have the goal to reward innovative ICT-enabled solutions and initiatives from all sectors that help to improve the quality of life of senior citizens.

Through the showcasing of innovative products and services, the Awards aim to raise awareness on the potential breadth of the consumer market and related business opportunities as well as the expected savings in medium and long term public spending due to the beneficial effects of those solutions for European citizens’ health and wellbeing in prolonging their healthy and independent lives.

Last Thursday 3rd of May the Silver Economy Awards movement has celebrated its First Ceremony. After the presentation of the products and services brought by the nine finalists, Andy Bleaden from ECHAlliance had the pleasure to announce the three winners in the three categories: Public Authorities, Not-for-Profit Organizations and For-Profit Organizations.

Andy Bleaden said

“This is a real example of best practice  that is easy to scale up and replicate. If Cities  need ready to roll examples of what Works Silver Economy  Awards is a really good example of 9 scalable solutions all recognized  by peers across Europe”.

Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Digital Health and Society, granted her official support to the movement sending a video message to the Ceremony’s attendees.  Manuel Mateo, from the Commissioner’s Cabinet, stressed the importance of supporting networking and valuable initiatives as the Awards with adequate skill renovation plans to equip health and social care professionals, ICT developers and citizens themselves with the competencies that are needed to fully exploit the Silver Economy potential.

Moreover, by receiving the moral patronage from Markku Markkula, First Vice-President of the Committee of the Regions, and having the Ceremony hosted at the CoR premises, the Silver Economy movement got a significant recognition of the urgency of having consistent strategies across Europe to raise the impact of the numerous promising examples in the EU Member States and Regions and scale them up.

ECHAlliance, as a partner of SEED project, supports the movement providing professional expertise in the critical assessment of the first edition of the Awards, the communication and stakeholder engagement activities and fosters the Silver Economy vision in its international network and regional ecosystems.

See the Photo Gallery of the event here

Learn more about SEED project here