San Francisco was just named one of the 20 finalists in Bloomberg Philanthopies’ Mayors Challenge. The competition judged 305 cities who applied for the challenge under the direction of the mayor on how well they could produce inventive ideas to address pressing social issues. Each city’s concept was judged based on the vision, ability to implement, impact and “replicability.” The only requirement for a city’s submission was that it has a population greater than 30,000. The winning city will be award a $5 million prize where the four runner-up cities will each receive $1 million.
San Francisco’s proposal is to use micro-volunteering to give its unemployed citizens on the job training. This concept is designed to help make individuals more employable as well as provide necessary labor for government projects.
Other finalists include Santa Monica, Boston, Chicago and Houston. And Ideas ranged from an idea on how to cut Cincinnati’s infant mortality rate in half to Knoxville’s idea of using unused urban areas for food production.
The next step in the competition will have representatives of the finalist cities participate in a two-day collaborative meeting. This meeting will have representatives of each city working together to help strengthen and expand each other’s concepts. Then each finalist city will have to resubmit their finalized concept for judging. Finally, by the middle of 2013, the winning city will be announced.
