The Bavaria Israel Partnership Accelerator (BIPA) wins the prestigious Shimon Peres Prize 2022. The award is presented annually jointly by the German-Israeli Future Forum Foundation and the German Federal Foreign Office. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock presented the award on October 11, 2022 at Berlin's Red City Hall in the presence of the Peres family.
The Bavaria Israel Partnership Accelerator (BIPA) The international BIPA program uses education of young people and economic cooperation to work for international understanding and against discrimination. Since 2021, in addition to HM Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences and itsentrepreneurship center SCE, TH Deggendorf, OTH Regensburg, FOM University of Applied Sciences and the Israeli partner Tech7 from Be'er Sheva, Khalifa University Abu Dhabi from the United Arab Emirates are also part of the cooperative program. The program is supported and co-financed by the Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy, the Israeli Consulate General for Southern Germany and the Department of Economics and Labor of the City of Munich.
International Education in Entrepreneurship
IPA is a unique action-learning experience for students and young professionals from Bavaria, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The program was launched in 2015. So far, 250 participants and over 50 companies have taken part in the ten editions. Since 2021, students from the United Arab Emirates have been working side by side in teams with students from Israel and Bavaria, thus forging long-lasting relationships. In international, interdisciplinary teams, they worked on real-world problems relevant to the companies, for which innovative solutions are developed.
These innovation challenges, proposed by companies and public institutions in Bavaria and Israel, concern e.g. the fields of Internet of Things, IT security, smart mobility or healthcare/medtech. To create an innovative concept and develop a prototype, the teams follow an innovation process.
The 2022 Shimon Peres Award Ceremony
At the award ceremony, Dr. Klaus Lederer, Mayor of Berlin, welcomed the guests. Dr. Tamara Or, Director of the German-Israeli Future Forum, and Prof. Tsvia Walden, daughter of Shimon Peres, spoke before Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock recognized the two winning projects and presented the certificates to Morten Edzards (BIPA Project Manager at the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship at Munich University of Applied Sciences), Omri Yitro Dai (Tech7 Be'er Sheva) and Dr. Ahmed Al Shoaibi (Khalifa University Abu Dhabi).
"We are very proud of this recognition of our BIPA program," said Prof. Dr. Thomas Stumpp, Vice President for Economic Affairs and Transfer at HM. "BIPA clearly demonstrates how universities can both teach economic contexts and fulfill their social responsibility when educating young people in entrepreneurship. By involving companies that present multicultural BIPA teams with business-relevant challenges, important impulses for innovation and transfer into the economy are set. However, the special social added value at BIPA is that this can also succeed on a large international scale. The teams will benefit for a long time to come from the shared spirit and the contacts made at BIPA."
"The SCE as the Entrepreneurship Center of the HM stands for 'Responsible Entrepreneurship', which is also our claim," adds Prof. Dr. Klaus Sailer, Managing Director of the SCE, which BIPA initiated in 2015. "Entrepreneurship, as we understand it, goes far beyond the creation of start-ups. Thus, entrepreneurship addresses overall societal challenges and can bring people together and unite them for the common vision of creating positive impact for society, thus even connecting different cultures and ecosystems, as BIPA proves."
The Shimon Peres Award For decades, former Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres (1923-2016) worked to strengthen German-Israeli relations. In memory of Shimon Peres and his work, the Federal Foreign Office established the prize, which is awarded in cooperation with the German-Israeli Future Forum Foundation. The Shimon Peres Prize is awarded annually to two projects and is endowed with 10,000 euros each.
More information about the Bavaria Israel Partnership Accelerator (BIPA) can be found on the project's website.
Pictures (c) DIZF/ Eyal Granith
