Ben & Jerry's co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield
CoderDojo and MyMind are among 18 social entrepreneur businesses from around Europe that have made the final cut of the Ben & Jerry’s Join Our Core 2013 search for the most socially conscious and sustainably minded entrepreneurs.
CoderDojo is an Irish-led global movement teaching young people how to code, develop websites, apps, games and more, in a social, collaborative learning environment. The initiative has grown to include more than 15,000 children who are learning to write software every weekend in more than 35 countries.
MyMind is a self-referral model of mental health that provides psychological and psychotherapy services to people seeking mental health support.
Their founders will be hoping to impress an expert panel that includes Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield and the director of Ashoka Ireland, Paul O’Hara.
The overall winners will scoop €10,000 and will receive specialist business mentoring from social entrepreneur network Ashoka.
The winners will also have their business logo featured on a special Ben & Jerry’s tub to be launched in 2014 and will travel to the Ben & Jerry’s headquarters in the US state of Vermont to mark the company’s 35th anniversary this year.
This is the second year of the ice-cream maker’s social entrepreneur competition. In March, for the first time an Irish company called Archipelago was to appear on tubs of Ben & Jerry’s new ice cream Clever Cookies after being one of four companies to win the Join Our Core competition aimed at finding the world’s best social entrepreneurs.
“When Ben (Cohen) and I set up the company in 1978, we believed giving back to the community was as important as making great tasting ice cream,” said Greenfield.
“We’re humbled by the number and standard of entries we’ve seen this year, and can’t wait to meet and hear more from this year’s finalists.”
