60 people have secured a place on the 2020 Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Ideas Academy programme.
245 applications were received this year, up from 204 in 2019.
The programme provides training and support for people who want to develop business ideas that can help solve social problems.
During the four-month programme, participants will get the opportunity to take part in interactive sessions on organisational structures, governance, and piloting.
The budding social entrepreneurs will then get the chance to pitch for seed funding from a total pot of €40,000.
Speaking on RTÉs Morning Ireland programme, Ruchi Palan, one of the participants selected for the programme, shared her idea and her mission to make learning more inclusive.
"My idea is about helping people with disabilities to contribute to digital accessibility. This is so important because people with disabilities are largely left out of our increasingly digital world," she said.
"Poor digital accessibility prevents them from taking advantage of the same education and employment opportunities that others can," she added.
Ms Palan said she hopes the SEI programme will help her create a solution to help businesses improve the accessibility of their digital offerings.
"I'm most looking forward to the mentoring and networking opportunities being offered as part of the programme," she added.
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Due to Covid-19, SEI re-designed the Ideas Academy in recent weeks to run it online and transition to in-person delivery, if and when possible during the lifespan of the programme, Sara Dennedy, Director of Impact at SEI, explained.
"We had to pivot quite quickly when everything changed in March and we actually held virtual judging. We received all the applications online and then over 100 professionals from the business and social sectors across Ireland helped us to select the 60 participants," she said.
Building a community of like-minded people is hugely important, she added.
"The journey of a social entrepreneur is pretty risky and is quite lonely, so we try to surround them with people who can help them, even after they finish up on the programme."
