RLabs Namibia in partnership with NBII launched its first Youth for Youth event that showcased social innovations and enterprises driven by young people. This exciting gathering welcomed distinguished guests from different sectors and across Namibia to celebrate with the RLabs Namibia team. Guests included the Rector of Polytechnic of Namibia, Ambassador of Finland, USAID, UNICEF, Private Sector, Public Sector as well as representatives from Civil Society.
The theme for the day was Social Innovation and it was highlighted by many of the speakers that the social plight of society requires a generation of young people to stand up and drive change through new ideas and innovations that can make a difference in uplifting their communities.
“Social Innovation is new ideas that work in meeting social goals”
Oxford SAID Business School
There were 5 areas shared as key to the Social Innovation Process:
- Discovery: The realization of a challenge and thinking about how to approach it.
- Interpretation: Trying to gain a deeper understanding of the problem and exploring how to interpret what has been learned from the problem.
- Ideation: Seeing the opportunity in the midsts of the challenge and then identifying what to create.
- Experimentation: Once the idea have been identified then exploring how to build it.
- Evolution: After trying something new how do you go about and evolve it.
The young people who attended the event then had an opportunity to do a short workshop facilitated by RLabs Namibia on applying Social Innovation thinking to a real challenge in their local communities. In 90 minutes the group of youth identified and co-created more than 20 solutions that could be pursued in their communities to drive social change.