Bloomberg Philanthropies

Michael Bloomberg, who founded the North American media company Bloomberg L.P., was New York’s 108th mayor. He launched the Mayors Challenge prizes to help improve the quality of people’s lives through social innovation projects. These are transferable and replicable ideas that have to be implemented with ever tighter budgets and growing needs.

The Mayors Challenge is promoted by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the prizes awarded also include monitoring and implementation support to ensure the ideas can be reproduced in other cities.

The VinclesBCN project took part in the 2014 Mayors Challenge, along with 155 other cities. Barcelona was awarded the first prize, worth €5 million, while the other four finalists (Stockholm, Warsaw, Athens and Kirklees) received €1 million each.