Just Innovate

Meeting today at IHEID | 16h15 | Graduate Institute, The Fab

What is C4SI?  It is a student-led initiative that offers graduate students the possibility to use social innovation approaches to real-world problems through team-work collaboration and design-thinking methodology, and equips them with presentation skills to pitch their ideas. How? We adopt a learn by doing approach. Over one month, students attend workshops delivered by experts and receive the support of experienced mentors to progressively co-create an innovative solution to a real social challenge that is presented by one of our partnering challenge setters. Who? Participants are motivated students and young professionals based in Switzerland from any discipline, ranging from business and technology, to international affairs and development. Mentors are either academic or professional experts, or experienced entrepreneurs who are willing to make themselves available for the duration of the programme. They are a source of advice and support to participating teams as they develop their innovations. Workshop Leaders are skilled and experienced people in a particular field that are willing to share their knowledge and passion with our participants through an interactive workshop to introduce specific tools that will be used by the teams to tackle one aspect of their challenge. Challenge Setters are leading international affairs and development organizations, NGOs and private companies. They provide concrete social challenges based on issues they have identified in their respective fieldwork. When? Where? The 2024 edition will run from the first week of October to the first week of November 2024, in Geneva. Workshops take place every Saturday and teams also work in-between.

We are recruiting for the 2024 Executive Board! 🎊 C4SI is an opportunity to network with some incredible international organisations and gain experience in leadership in social innovation. Fill in the Google form by March 7th 23:59 (CET), and you are good to go! Link: https://lnkd.in/eub53KFZ

Applications for C4SI 2024 Co-Directors are officially open! Want to take the lead in continuing this amazing social innovation program? Apply here by 9 February: https://lnkd.in/e2XRb-8X

📢 #Update 🙌 ILO's Cooperatives Unit contributes as a 'Challenge Setter' at the 10th edition of #C4SI 🤝 The Student team worked on the challenge 'The role of youth in strengthening the Social and Solidarity Economy #SSE in #Asia' 🔗 Read More: http://www.bit.ly/c4SI

With 2030 getting closer and closer, the global outlook on SDG progress can be bleak. Renewed commitment and innovative approaches are key. This is where C4SI Just Innovate comes in. Harnessing creative young minds with the expertise and resources of international organizations and NGOs, our program addressed the theme, “Reframing Sustainable Development: Continuities and Transformations.” Watching the students confidently pitch their ideas at the C4SI 10th anniversary Demo Day on Friday, I was so proud to see how their hard work throughout the six-week program paid off. 40 graduate students developed innovative solutions to real-life challenges facing organizations ranging from the use of AI in security sector governance and reform to the leveraging of positive human emotions towards the SDGs. This year, we were happy to partner with the International Trade Centre, UNAIDS, International Labour Organization ILO's Cooperatives Unit, DCAF - Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance, International Gender Champions, IMPACT Initiatives, SDG Lab at UN Geneva, and Plan International. A special thank you to Ambassador Matthew Wilson, Bénédicte Gilbert, and John Elbing for offering encouragement alongside critical questions as judges and to Andrina Beuggert for sharing her experience of co-founding Just Innovate and C4SI 10 years ago. I am grateful to have co-led this project alongside the passionate and steady Luciana Markstein and our wonderful executive team of Patrick Condon, Adriana Ramírez Sánchez, Alejandro Gómez, and Julia Peris Castro. Not only did C4SI allow students from 24 countries around the world to learn from each other, but they also gained insight from mentors and workshop facilitators on international development and design thinking. For several projects, C4SI Demo Day was not the end, but students are continuing to develop their ideas with our partner organizations moving forward. It is critical to give young minds the resources and connections to realize their talents and ideas for a sustainable world. #sdgs #innovation #designthinking #sustainabledevelopment

What a wonderful evening seeing all of these amazing University students deliver their pitches as part of the C4SI Just Innovate challenge. Wonderful to give the keynote, serve as a judge and reconnect with some old ITC friends. By the way: the team delivering the solution for UNAIDS won! Here was my short short keynote: Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this evening’s celebration. Innovation is not only an output- it is a process. It is a way of thinking and partnering. It teaches us to think strategically, to think sympathetically and to think safely Why strategically? Because you are identifying problems and crafting solutions. Why sympathetically? Because you are scanning lives beyond just yours and thinking how you can improve for others and for the future. Why safely? Because the act of innovation has to provide a safe space for experimentation, failure and conflict but with a clear focus in mind: making things better than when you found them. You can’t be taught to be innovative. You can however be taught to harness what is in all of us no matter who we are, where we are and what we do. The act of innovating is the story of human progress. Everything around us from the chairs we sit on, the coffee we are drinking, the shoes we are wearing, to the devices we are using is the product of creativity. To quote one of my favorite songs ‘Somebody thought of that And someone believed it Look what it's done so far’ And that is really at the heart of the act of innovating: providing an opportunity and belief to take ideas from your head to the real world And it is that which we are seeing today at this collaborate for social impact demo day 2023. And it is why I am so very honoured to be here today: not to judge but to learn and to support. I come from a small beautiful island in the Caribbean. We are known for our beautiful beaches, for being the birthplace of rum, and the birthplace of Rihanna. But also for having a Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley, who is one of the loudest voices leading the global charge on addressing the climate crisis on the one hand, while also leading the work with WHO as a co-lead on   The Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance. At the core of finding solutions to both the climate crisis and health crises is innovation- People and processes working together to find shared solutions that help save us from ourselves. For small countries like Barbados innovation is not a nice to have: it is a fundamental policy choice. I look forward to being inspired, dazzled and challenged this evening Thank you Just Innovate Geneva Graduate Institute Barbados Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade International Gender Champions #innovation #diversityandinclusion

🎉 Last week, we celebrated a decade of innovation! 🎉 I was invited to speak in Geneva at the 10-year anniversary event of "Collaborate for Social Impact" (#C4SI) by Just Innovate, the student initiative I co-founded in 2013. 🚀 How did it all begin? 🚀 Top lectures at the Geneva Graduate Institute that left me with the impression that there was something missing: not only analyzing our world's challenges but learning how to act upon them 🚀 A fantastic 4-day event by euforia CH that taught me how to start my own project for social change (using #designthinking) 🚀 The Facebook post of my co-founder Barrie Sander who had a similar vision and was looking for team members for Just Innovate From there we launched: ✍ A failed essay competition about innovation (with zero entries) 💡 An amazing 2-day summit on "Apps for Social Change" with hands-on workshops, mentoring sessions and a pitching competition 🌎 The first C4SI program (with co-directors Amri Pitoyo Priyadi and Serena Mithbaokar), leading students through a multi-week innovation cycle to tackle challenges presented by international organisations Since then, the program continued and obviously still is thriving today. Congratulations to Cara Au & Luciana Markstein and the entire team for organizing a great 2023 edition of #C4SI! Kudos to all the participants for your hard work over the past weeks - you tackled these challenges with a lot of dedication and creativity. It was also great to see long-term mentors and partners like Biliana Vassileva or Adriana De Oro (she/her) again - among many new faces. 🥂 Cheers to the early innovators who shaped what #C4SI is today: Lorrayne Porciuncula, Danaé Frangoulis, Ashley Hartz, Michael Bimmler, Eva Wilde, Marina Fenner, Edith Read, Madevi (Maddy) Sun-Suon, Vivian Marcelino S. Lima, Elena Zheglova, Nitzan Arny, Barzin Aryan, Tina Čadež and everyone else from the generations that followed. #studentinnovation #designthinking #geneva

Taking a moment to give a shout-out to the amazing board of C4SI 2023! They are responsible for making this platform possible. From recruiting workshop facilitators, challenge setters, and mentors, to securing funding, booking venues, and developing our educational program. C4SI has existed for 10 years thanks to the passion of young people who believe in the social innovation ideas of students in Geneva. Thank you to Cara Au and Luciana Markstein who serve as our Co-Directors and have overseen every part of the program, to Adriana Ramírez Sánchez who has done an amazing job organizing all of our events and workshops, to Patrick Condon for securing our funding and developing our financial plan, to Julia Peris Castro for reaching out to organizations in Geneva to form partnerships, and to Alejandro Gómez for managing our communications and outreach strategy. Here is to many more years of collaboration, learning, and innovation!

Last Saturday, our participants had the chance to learn from Ole Werner and Catarina Batista from IdeaSquare - the innovation space at CERN, who led workshops on the next two steps of the design thinking methodology: define and ideation. In the morning session, Ole guided our participants in refining their empathetic insights to clearly define and frame the problem statement, setting the foundation for creative ideation and solution development. After lunch, Catarina shared some learning techniques and strategies to generate a wide range of creative solutions, fostering a culture of innovation and brainstorming to address defined problems effectively. Thank you so much to our facilitators! Our program wouldn't be the same without you. And thank you to our participants for their continuous enthusiasm as they develop their solutions to the challenges.