The President of DCU, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, today applauded the announcement of the national and international competition, ‘Your Country Your Call’, by the Irish President Mary McAleese. President McAleese formally launched the competition at an event in the National Gallery in Dublin on Wednesday 17 February. The originator of the initiative, Dr Martin McAleese, will be appearing on the Late Late Show on Friday night to discuss the project further.

Your Country Your Call is a competition to find and reward two transformational proposals that will help secure prosperity and jobs for Ireland. Your Country, Your Call will award the two winning proposals with a prize of €100,000 each and both proposals will then be implemented with the support of an independent working group and a development fund of up to €500,000 for each project.

The competition aims to create future prosperity, while at the same time generating hope, confidence, and positive thinking. It is about getting everyone in the country to look at what they can do to make use of our innate ability as a people to be creative and imaginative and generate fresh thinking.

www.yourcountryyourcall.com will be the home for the competition. The interactive website contains full details regarding the application process
and also provides a platform for potential entrants to see who else is entering, what else is being proposed and seek possible collaborations. It also gives people the opportunity to leave a message of support or link to discussion groups on other social networking sites.

The competition is open for entries from the 17 February until April 30 after which the entries will be reviewed, assessed and filtered down over the summer to a point where two winning entries are selected in the middle of September 2010.

Dublin City University is proud to have played a part in realising Dr McAleese’s vision. The Chancellor of DCU, former EU Commissioner Mr David Byrne SC, will be Chair of the Judging Panel, and President of DCU, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, is on the Steering Committee for the competition. Dr Claire Bohan and Mr Gordon McConnell, Director of Programmes for the Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship, were also involved in the working groups.