SK-NIC started the year by presenting the successful projects from the first call of the SK-NIC Fund.
The presentation took place on 9th January 2020 at HubHub in Bratislava. The excellent atmosphere of creativity and ideas was complemented by representatives of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic for Investments and Informatization (further as „the Office“), Registrars and of course the winners of the first call of the SK-NIC Fund. The ceremony was also personally supported by the Chairman of the Board of SK-NIC, a.s., Ben Crawford, who pointed out the quality of the winning projects. Short video here.
The presentation of supported projects confirmed the correctness of the mechanism of the SK-NIC Fund. We are pleased, that from such amount of projects exactly these have been approved and we are pleasantly surprised by their quality and variety. We see that the virtual world reaches into every area of life, for example education, interpersonal relationships, or helping young people in need.
„Universities, schools, non-profit organizations – all aplicants of the supported projects were able to successfully present their projects in front of the representatives of the Internet community and they confirmed that the projects had been selected correctly. With the winners of the first call having already received the funds to realize their projects, there is only one thing left to us – to leave such a clear message to the public, that we are looking forward to the results and benefits of the winning projects in the Internet community,“ said Mr. Jaroslav Kmeť, General Manager of the IT Department of the Office.
In the first round of the call, 56 project proposals were received, from which the Pontis Foundation recommended to support 11 and these were also supported. It is an interesting fact that 43% of all requests were from the field of education, however also citizen associations, natural persons, limited liability companies, foundations or church organizations were among the applicants. Requested sums are within 5,000 EUR to 10,000 EUR range, practically the whole allocated sum of 100,000 EUR was reallocated.
We are pleased with the success of the first call, and we are already preparing another one, which will be focused on larger projects than the first one. This means that we will support projects ranging from 10,000 EUR to 30,000 EUR. We believe that this call will be announced already this spring. The second call will support projects in the following three areas:
- ICT education
- Digital inclusion
- Projects with a positive impact on the environment (so-called „Green IT“)
The following projects received the support from the first call of the SK-NIC Fund:
| Applicant | Name of the project | Approved amount |
| EDUMA | A safer online environment for pupils and students | 9 934 € |
| Learn2Code | We program with GalaxyCodr | 10 000 € |
| Stopka | Pouring in the Corvus PROGRESSbar | 10 000 € |
| Association for Youth, Science and Technology | Junior Internet | 10 000 € |
| KASPIAN | Safely on the Internet with OKO | 10 000 € |
| Association of deaf educators | Increased understanding of data protection for deaf people | 7 373 € |
| Pavel Dobšinský Elementary School | In the footsteps of an interactive floor | 10 000 € |
| IPčko | We help young people through the Internet | 10 000 € |
| Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice | Summer Cybercrime School 2020 | 4 990 € |
| Secondary School of Electrical Engineering | Secure Zochova | 5 437 € |
| Secondary vocational school of forestry and wood J.D.M. in Liptovský Hrádok | Modernization of material and technical equipment of the specialized classroom of geographical and information systems | 10 000 € |
All necessary information about the SK-NIC Fund can be found on the SK-NIC, a.s. website and also at the Pontis Foundation website.
We wish a successful start to the all projects and we are already looking forward to the next call!
