Our business contest was won by the Nepalese social enterprise, Dignity In Difference. Its groundbreaking initiatives help to resist digital toxicity by fostering safer, more inclusive digital spaces for women, gender minorities, and marginalized communities in South Asia.
The business contest was designed to recognise business organizations championing pro-democracy efforts, whether global businesses advocating for voting rights or local startups promoting civic engagement. Altogether we received thirteen applications from eight different countries, Colombia, France, Germany, Nepal, Switzerland, Turkey, Uruguay, and USA. The size of company ranged from 2 employees to 8000 employees and included a mixture of corporations, social enterprises, nonprofits, and cooperatives. The type of initiatives that were the focus of the entries were diverse and ranged from initiatives to encourage voter turnout to those focused on the development of more inclusive digital spaces, and those that seek to increase the transparency of corporate political involvement.
The finalists
The initial entries were judged by a panel of Rebalance team members, representing a mix of genders, seniority, and academic/practitioners. The entries were scored on three criteria: relevance to democracy; significance of impact/ potential impact relative to size of organization; creativity and innovativeness of project. Based on this we ranked the entries and selected three finalists who were invited to present at our Rebalance conference in September 2025 to select the winner. The finalists were:
- Project Lupai, from the German digital solutions company Aureka, which contributes to promoting democracy through an innovative AI assistant that answers questions about legal and administrative frameworks of migration and labor rights for migrants and precarious workers to know their rights, access reliable information and connect with experts and organizations that can support them further. Internally, Aureka is also building a cooperative company in which all long-term employees share profit and are involved in shaping the strategy of the business. Cecilia Maas and Bastián Silva from Aureka joined us at the conference to present their entry.
- TaaS platform, from E4RTH, a German transparency as a service company. The platform is designed to document and publicly display party contributions, ensuring members and voters can monitor funding flows. Planned pilot initiatives will enable real-time tracking of donations, exposing potential misconduct and enhancing accountability—thereby strengthening democratic practices. Moritz Maximilian Simon and Emilio Gonzalez from E4RTH joined us at the conference to present their entry.
- VoiceValor and Bunk With Kindness projects, from the Nepalese social enterprise, Dignity In Difference. These initiatives help to resist digital toxicity by fostering safer, more inclusive digital spaces for women, gender minorities, and marginalized communities in South Asia by equipping them to counter online harm, disinformation, and hate through innovative tools, advocacy and research. Himanshu Panday from Dignity in Difference joined us at the conference to present their entry.
Our final judging panel comprised policy and practice experts led by Elena Piani the director of Piani Projects. The winner was Dignity in Difference, whose innovative projects aimed at resisting digital toxicity and democratising digital spaces really impressed our judges for their creativity and impact.
