Social Innovation

Social innovation is all about solving social challenges in new ways – whether in health, education, the environment, climate change or something else. Social Innovation Camps (SICamp) help to build technical solutions to social challenges. Social Innovation Camps bring together ideas, people and digital tools to build web-based solutions to social problems – all in just one weekend. For more information check out the Wikipedia page.

Armenia’s first Social Innovation Camp took place in 2011. A second Social Innovation Camp was held in 2012 inviting participants to work on anti-corruption initiatives. The third and most recent SICamp brought together participants from 8 different countries to develop solutions that address human rights issues.

The Philosophy

Using the online world to change the offline world.

We think that the online world holds huge potential to help change the offline world. The web has changed the way we communicate, the way we get our news, how we shop and entertain ourselves, our friendships and the way we work: now it’s ready to change our education, health care and how we address important challenges in our local communities.

Thanks to the web, forming a group and organising coordinated action has become really easy. Now as information flows from person[MP1] , the cost of communication and collaboration – in term of financial and other resources – is extremely low.

So organising and creating solutions is no longer the preserve of big, expensive institutions. People – rather than companies, governments or charities – are increasingly capable of achieving things for themselves.

Bridging the gap between an idea and action – that’s exactly what Social Innovation Camps aim to do.

By bringing together a diverse group of people to collaborate in one space, we’re looking to bridge the gap between having an idea or posing a problem and making that idea concrete, taking it forward and incubating a project.

How does it work?

Before the Camp

The Social Innovation Camp starts with a big, open call for ideas and a call for participants. Anyone can enter with as many ideas as they want. You don’t need to be technically skilled – you just need to know about a social need that you’ve either encountered in your personal or professional life where the web might be able to help. The topic for Social Innovation Camp in 2015 is Climate Change and Kolba has already announced a challenge for Innovative Ideas to address Climate Change.

From the ideas submitted, a panel of judges select 4-5 of the most promising to be developed at the Social Innovation Camp weekend.

At the Camp

Then the people behind the selected ideas, together with software developers and designers, those with business and marketing skills, as well as individuals with an expert knowledge of social needs are invited to the Social Innovation Camp weekend.

From Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, participants are asked to organise themselves into teams around the selected ideas and try to answers the following questions:

  • What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?
  • What technology are you going to use?
  • How will you make your idea sustainable?
  • How will you get people to use your idea?

At the end of the two days, all participants come back together to pitch what they have built and on Sunday evening the judges choose the projects which have shown greatest potential.

After the Camp

After the Social Innovation Camp weekend, some teams will want to continue to grow their ideas. Limited number of projects will receive start-up support from Kolba Lab for implementation of their projects.

Here you can register for Social Innovation Camp on Climate Change to take place from March 27-29, 2015.