Six months after the ceremony of the first WeMed Award edition took place, we contacted the winners to find out how the Award impacted their work. Here is what we learned.

Green Fashion, from Egypt, were the winners of the category “Sustainable Business Models – Early stage”.

The prize for this category consisted of a financial award of 10,000€ and coaching services. The financial award helped them develop their production unit, increasing production capacity by 15%. Thanks to this, they were able to directly provide 15 job opportunities and they managed to recycle 13 tons and 7,000 pieces of clothing. They also increased reliance of solar energy as a primary source of energy, so now up to 85% of their energy consumption comes from renewable energies.

The coaching services consisted on a consultancy service to develop their e-commerce platform, in order to enhance sales and reach more customers. They also succeeded in creating a mini model of their new project Sustainable Fashion School, with the aim to raise awareness on sustainable fashion in Egypt. Finally, the award helped them reach institutions and programmes that could support them to achieve their productivity and sustainability goals.​

Fabric AID, from Lebanon, were the winners of the category “Sustainable Business Models – Growth stage”. The prize for this category consisted of a financial award of 15,000€ and coaching services.

The financial award allowed them to kick start the production of a new upcycled clothing brand. This provided job opportunities for 6 tailors currently working in the first collection, in a few months they expect to create job opportunities for another 30 tailors. Regarding the coaching services, they consisted on a consultancy service through which they reached out to many international fashion brands with whom they have promising discussions for collaborations between them and FabricAID. For example, the aim is to collect discarded collections and upcycle them, thus avoiding that they end up incinerated or in a landfill.

JREEEF, the Jordan Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Fund, were the winners of the “Public Authorities” category. The prize for this category consisted of an Honorary Award and a study visit to learn from institutions working on similar topics in other countries.

The Honorary Mention took place at COP22 of the Barcelona Convention in Antalya. The study visit took place in April 2022 in Barcelona, where the 3 representatives visited the Catalan Institute of Energy (ICAEN), the Insitute of Research on Energy of Catalonia (IREC) and the MedWaves office.

At ICAEN, the JREEEF representatives discussed about the energy transition, exchanging lessons learned from Jordan and from Catalonia. At MedWaves, the discussion was about the activities implemented by MedWaves in Jordan. JREEEF congratulated the work done with sustainable entrepreneurs, since it’s important to provide not just funds, but also skills, including access to finance skills. Lastly, at IREC, JREEF representatives learned about new promising technologies, such as flexible solar panels and smart energy storage systems, that if they were applied in Jordan, would allow the country to reach its climate change targets much earlier than expected. They also discussed possibilities for “waste-to-power”, creating biogas and fertilizers from waste.

JREEEF and its implementing partners have now direct contact with IREC to continue discussing any relevant topics and there are possibilities of working together in the framework of European energy research projects.

Stay tuned for the 2022 edition of the WeMed Award, coming soon. Maybe the next winner could be you! Sign up to the WeMed newsletter to get notified when the call for applications opens.