Interactions for collaborative social impact

We introduced Design Thinking mindset, framework, and tools through a fun, interactive virtual workshop to guide graduate students from various fields in their exploration of social entrepreneurship.

This event was hosted by Purpose in Motion.

During the lockdown, we experimented with virtual tools to facilitate collaborative, radical ideation and prototyping workshops in conjunction with Down to Innovate, a card game for creative social impact, to practice lateral thinking and cross-pollination.

Block COVID is a month-long virtual open innovation camp to activate anyone anywhere to build COVID-19 solutions on the blockchain and more, focusing on five challenges emerging from the pandemic: emergency response, education access, economic recovery, mental health, and caring for the most vulnerable and marginalized in society.

With a lead time of 2.5 weeks as cities began locking down, we mobilized talent and expertise across 22 cities across five continents to organize and produce 20+ live sessions ranging from the context for each mission to workshops on design and technology. We set up a collaboration platform, and developed a network of mentors to provide subject-matter expertise and technical support to 200+ people, including 11 initial ideas and 4 ongoing projects.

This event was hosted in collaboration with TryCrypto and the Global Shapers Community.

Clothes and textiles are the #1 source of primary microplastic to the oceans, accounting for 34.8% of the global total. In a world of fast fashion, the average clothing consumption per household per year is equivalent to the carbon emissions of 6000 cars on the road, and one third of the carbon footprint of clothes comes from the way we care for them. In some parts of the world, garment workers earn just one quarter of a living wage and work up to 150 hours of overtime per month. A survey of 219 fashion brands found that only 12% could demonstrate any action towards paying a wage above the legal minimum.

From unjust working conditions and human rights violations to significant environmental damage, the way that we produce and consume fashion is broken. How might we change the design, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of apparel to become kinder to people and planet?

As we explored the concurrent challenges facing the fashion industry today with Ryan Mario Yasin (Founder, Petit Pli), Rawan Maki (Creative Director, Rawan Maki Design House), Yang Liu (Founder, JustWears), and Josie Warden (Senior Researcher, RSA), we also looked at the consequences, implications, and potential opportunities they bring through the lens of design, technology, business, and policy.

This event is a part of Shaping Fashion, an initiative of the Global Shapers Community (a youth community within the World Economic Forum), and Fashion Revolution Week, which aims to unite people and organisations to work together towards radically changing the way our clothes are sourced, produced and consumed.

In recent decades, agricultural practices have started to cause soil degradation, water pollution, and a loss of nature in our countrysides. While over 70% of land in the UK is used for agriculture, the number of farms in the UK has decreased by two thirds in the past two decades, and many of the remaining farmers depend on subsidies to survive.

Currently, domestic farming is able to meet 76% of the UK’s food needs, but weather and disease can affect this supply; the drought this past summer caused food prices to rise, and this may only be the beginning of rising prices to come post-Brexit. Good agricultural practices involves projecting years or even generations ahead, but it is difficult to do so in the face of unpredictable political, economic and environmental conditions.

How might we increase food production while reducing our environmental footprint, and keeping our food supply healthy and affordable? As we explore the concurrent challenges facing agriculture in the UK today, we look at the consequences, implications, and potential opportunities they bring through the lens of design, technology, business, and policy.

This event was hosted in partnership with the RSA and Daemon Solutions.

Panelists with expertise in government policy, blockchain, additive manufacturing, design thinking, and education led a discussion exploring the future trends, consequences, and implications that may arise from China’s aging population.

After reframing the issue, participants were invited to combine seemingly incompatible concepts to identify potential opportunities. Panelists became mentors during the game, mingling with the participants and helping them think through the ideas.

The event culminated with a rapid pitch session, and the panelists judged the concepts on an impact map weighing out creativity and feasibility.

The winning concept was a product that enabled the elderly to be grandparents to children that needed care, to address intergenerational understanding and loneliness in the elderly population.

Upon registration, each participant took on the perspective of designer, engineer, business person, or "topic expert". The evening kicked off with a series of crash courses facilitated by 10 speakers. The topic experts learned about common misconceptions about air pollution (and associated survival tactics), the effects of air pollution on our health, and current solutions for clean air.

Participants in the design track learned about the basics of UI/UX design and radical ideation. The technology track learned about hardware development and automated interactions in software. The business track learned about strategy and marketing. Then the design, technology, and business tracks converged for a session on design thinking.

The participants then self organized into cross-disciplinary teams and began using their newfound knowledge to ideate and prototype new ways to tackle air pollution. Highlights included a bicycle with a tubular, self-contained, breathing environment. The winning concept, a baby stroller with built-in clean air environment, was awarded consulting sessions with the judges.

Smallholder farmers, the people who grow food in small plots of land generally adjacent to their family home, provide the majority of the world’s food supply. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, four-fifths of the developing world's food is a product of small sized farms. Yet they often live in poverty, lacking the financial means and education to access technologies that could immensely increase their efficiency and yield.

With speakers ranging from entrepreneurs in vertical agriculture and agriculture supply chains, to global agriculture sections of major consulting companies and representative from the UN agricultural projects, we dove into the topic of food production, to discuss how we might ensure sustainable agricultural growth to meet increased demand. In particular, we bought together the perspectives of design, business, policy, and technology to look at how we might align incentives to enable smallholder farmers to leverage agricultural technologies to compete in the global market.

First, we introduced the challenges surrounding smallholder farmers to establish the context for the discussion. Then we explored technologies and policies that support sustainable food production. Finally, we considered fresh perspectives of design, technology, and business that at first glance may not have a link to agriculture to see what new ideas may arise.

Bringing together perspectives from an ed-tech entrepreneur, the CEO of an alternative school in South Africa, the founder of a teacher training company for rural China, a design engineer from Mexico, and an ed-tech investor to discuss their respective approaches to achieving education equity, and to brainstorm new ways of doing it together.

Bringing together diverse minds to generate ideas and strategies for EGRC to become more proactive in raising awareness, more financially sustainable, and more operationally sustainable.

Bringing together the perspectives of design, technology, and business to solve for challenges presented by Philanthropy in Motion.