Ben & Jerry’s, the Unilever-owned ice cream brand, has linked up with VSO, the UK volunteering organisation, to launch a competition offering funding for ethical start-up companies which match the brand’s core ideal, ‘giving back to the community’.

Finalists in the Join Our Core promotion will pitch their ideas to a panel of business leaders, including the ice cream brand’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield and representative of partners including international social entrepreneurialism organisation Ashoka, VSO and the Fairtrade Foundation.

The five winning social entrepreneurs will each get a €10,000 award and will also have their business names featured on bespoke tubs of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. The winners will also get six months mentoring from Ashoka.

As an added sweetener to get people to enter, the first 100 entrants will receive a year’s supply of ice cream.

The competition is open to people aged between 18 and 34 years old in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, who are creating new models for sustainable business which will help make a difference in communities.

Ben & Jerry’s, VSO and Ashoka will review all the entries and pick 25 semi-finalists which the expert panel of judges will then look at to select 15 finalists, who will be sent to Uganda for the next stage of the competition.

In Uganda, the 15 finalists will then spend 10 days with VSO, learning about the farming cooperative that Ben &Jerry’s buys its fair-trade vanilla from, living and working in their community, examining the effects of climate change and working with local young people.

In addition to the five €10,000 award winners, there will also be five ‘People’s Choice Award’ where the Join Our Core community pick five people to win a € 1,000 cash prize.

There is a commercial factor in the compeition: Ben & Jerry's is also just launching a new range of ice creams, Ben & Jerry's Core, which features a core of soft sauce surrounded by two Fairtrade icecream flavours. The slogan for the launch is also 'Join Our Core'.