We have 10 more years to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It’s not much time, so we must act now. In fact the UN has named the next 10 years the #decadeofaction. 10toGO, brought to you by Volkswagen Group and Microsoft, is our first joint step of action: a kick-starting platform for sustainable, data-driven innovation.

We teamed up with international experts who helped us identify key SDG-related challenges where data-driven solutions are needed. Now it’s your turn to act and make the change happen.

We are looking for you: teams of makers, hackers, developers, out-of-the-box thinkers, designers, communicators, environmentalists, social workers, medical and transport specialists, data scientists, you name it. We are looking for your wits and energy and we are determined to help you succeed.

How can you join? Form a team of 3 to 5 makers and apply till January 15th, 2021. Accepted teams will be notified by January 23rd.

What awaits you? Firstly, a virtual Kick-off on February 1st. You will learn about the challenges, get your hands on the data and get ready for a month of innovating. A design sprint with trainers from Microsoft will bring your team to speed. Throughout February you will have access to technical, machine-learning, design, and topic experts and take part in weekly Q&A sessions. Last but not least, a pitching workshop will help you to wrap-up and prepare your work for a final submission on February 24th.

On Friday February 26, the jury members have the chance to interact with you in Q&A sessions. This will be your last chance to convince them of the innovation power of your team and project, until the jury decision is announced on the afternoon of that day.

We will help the winning team to bring their solution to life. To help you, we will give you the following: ample funds to support your team for 6 months during their planned stay in Munich (possibly we'll allow for remote incubation); compute infrastructure to tune your neural networks or random forests; a space to work, integrated with machine-learning experts; and incubation and introduction to the Munich startup ecosystem to make your solution sustainable. On top of that, an SDG expert will be advising you on how to bring sustainable impact.

Do you have any questions? Drop us a line at pivotal@10togo.eu and we’ll do our best to come back to you ASAP.