The Intercultural Innovation Award

The Intercultural Innovation Award is a partnership between the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and the BMW Group that aims to select and support innovative grassroots projects that encourage intercultural dialogue and cooperation around the world.

Not-for-profit organisations - in any country around the world - that are active in promoting intercultural understanding, with a track record of managing intercultural projects and willingness to expand their range of action, are eligible to apply. These organisations should be working in the fields of:

• migration and integration;
• intercultural awareness;
• education for intercultural citizenship; and/or
• the role of specific groups (faith-based; women; youth; media).

The Intercultural Innovation Award is bestowed upon 10 organisations every year. Winners will become members of the World Intercultural Facility for Innovation (WIFI), which helps winners to become more efficient and to expand. WIFI also enables successful projects to be replicated in other contexts or settings where they might be relevant. The specific support received will depend on the individual needs of the projects. The top ten finalists will be invited to present their projects at the 6th UNAOC Global Forum in August 2014 in Bali, Indonesia. A total of US$100,500 is offered to the awardees, of which US$40,000 goes to the winning project.

This award has an evaluation component. WIFI is developing a methodology to assess the impact of The Intercultural Innovation Award on the work of the awardees. This methodology includes analysis of data, self-response surveys, and one-on-one interviews with programme managers, beneficiaries, and other participants in the project. Amongst the 8 impact indicators articulated by award organisers are: (i) network building: "Building a community of practitioners is an essential indicator of organizations' commitment to cultural understanding" and (ii) structural change: "The promotion of cultural understanding at the grassroots level needs to impact societal and political levels. Structural change refers to mid-long term generalized changes of fundamental structures. Organizations can affect structural change by providing alternative successful models to managing diversity; being catalyst of new social dynamics; and, sometimes, influencing policy-making processes."