Better Together Award 2019
How might we encourage innovative cooperations between public sector institutions and starts ups and/or civil society organization to support local and global climate action?
Partners
Countries
Global
Project
The project aim is to highlight the relevance and value for innovative cooperations between public sector institutions and start ups and/or civil society initiatives for local & global climate protection and climate change mitigation & adaptation. The Award and its featured ventures will be part of the ICCA 2019 conference for Vertical Integration for Climate Action in Heidelberg, May 2019.
In collaboration with GIZ and BMU, Impact Hub Berlin focuses on four main action points:
- Raise awareness for innovation cooperation on a global level by writing a state-of-the-art trend report and facilitating a global call-for-application to find the five best-practices in public / start-up cooperation in the field of climate action
- Support the winning teams to generate impact at scale
- Honor and present the five best-practices at the ICCA 2019 conference
- Initiate and replicate innovative solution of public / start-up cooperations
SDG
- 6 Clean Water and Sanitation
- 7 Affordable and Clean Energy
- 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
- 12 Responsible Consumption and Production
- 13 Climate Action
- 17 Partnerships for the Goals
>> Want to know more or host your own program with us? Get in touch!
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Blockchain Pioneers Hackathon
Blockchain4Good – Shaping Smart Sustainable Cities for the Future
EMPOWERED BY
Locations
Bratislava –> Berlin –> Shanghai
Hackathon
Blockchain Pioneers 2018 is coming to Berlin! Join the hackathon to build a blockchain solution from scratch that shapes cities of tomorrow! Win 20.000 DCT, mentoring as well as a trip to join the Shanghai International Blockchain Week 2018 (SIBW) in Shanghai!
You have 2.5 day to hack, meet pioneers, entrepreneurs, techies and changemakers, learn from experts in the field of blockchain and social innovation and receive one-on-one mentoring to create your blockchain solutions that shapes smart sustainable cities.
We will focus on the following tracks:
Government | Mobility & Logistics | Energy | Finance | Health
Prizes
- 20.000 DCT, mentoring & collaboration with DECENT to implement the solution
- Compete with the winners from all global DECENT hackathons
- 4x ticket + trip to the Shanghai International Blockchain Week 2018 in Shanghai (tickets + flight tickets + accommodation)
- 2x ticket + trip to the Shanghai International Blockchain Week 2018 in Shanghai (tickets + flight tickets + accommodation)
- Team participation in the LVLX Summer Camp
- 1x ticket + trip to the Shanghai International Blockchain Week 2018 in Shanghai (tickets + flight tickets + accommodation)
Meet the Mentors & Speakers
Senior Engineer & Co-Initiator at LVLX
Ignition Talk & Mentorship: Mobility & Logistics
Blockchain Governance Expert at GIZ Blockchain Lab
Ignition Talk & Mentorship: Governance
Project Partners
This hackathon is hosted by DECENT, Impact Hub Berlin, and the Shanghai International Blockchain Week 2018, empowered by Wanxiang Blockchain Lab.
/// Register now ///
>> Want to know more about this hackathon? Contact Sophie Münzberg!
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Human-centered design of personal-finance-management app for financial inclusion
How might we empower Namibian citizens to access, understand and make use of their free annual credit report and thus achieve financial literacy?
Partners
Countries
Namibia
Project
- ProBATS, its partner Financial Literacy Initiative (FLI), and the credit reference bureau TransUnion came up with the idea of creating an app that offers to download to one’s phone a free annual credit report (a legal entitlement of any Namibian from the credit reference bureaus) and at the same time to receive personal finance-tips or functionalities (e. g. calculating installments for given credit amounts).
- To ensure that the app is user-centered, we co-design and implement a human-centered design process based on Design Thinking methodology together with GIZ Namibia and FabLab:
- Stakeholder alignment to understand supply perspective
- Local qualitative user research to explore user scope
- Five-day Design Sprint with stakeholders to develop a product concept
SDG
- 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
- 17 Partnerships for the Goals
>> Want to know more or host your own program with us? Get in touch!
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ImpACT – Building Synergies between German and Afghan Start-ups
How can we strengthen German–Afghan start-up ecosystems with one another?
Partners
Countries
Afghanistan, Germany
Project
- Designing a Bootcamp and inviting key German and Afghan entrepreneurs
- Understanding local challenges and enabling both to learn from one another
- Gaining visibility for the powerful entrepreneurial scene in Afghanistan
>> Want to know more or host your own program with us? Get in touch!
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EU’s FABMove – connect social innovation hubs across the world
How can we strengthen relationships and exchange between hubs all focussing on social innovation?
Partners
Countries
France, Israel, Argentina, Costa Rica, Indonesia
Project
- Local Workshops to empower social innovators
- Immerse and meet local social innovators and pioneers to connect and get inspired
>> Want to know more or host your own program with us? Contact Anna Lässer!
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BMW Impact Safari for Purpose – Driven Leadership
How can we inspire and empower top-level management to create a purpose-driven environment for their employees?
Partners
Countries
Germany
Project
- We plug corporates into our local impact ecosystem to make them experience a new world
- 2-3 full day workshop with excursions across Berlin
- Tailored topics designed to inspire and leverage purpose-driven leadership
>> Want to know more or host your own program with us? Get in touch!
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Accelerate MENA
How can we empower and connect the local entrepreneurial ecosystem in Tunis and Amman and help them create new solution to improve sustainable production & consumption as well as create a better future for renewable energy?
Partners
Countries: Jordan, Tunisia, Germany
Project
- Hosting of local Bootcamps in Amman and Tunis to inspire and empower people to become entrepreneurs and develop ideas
- Selection of most promising solutions in each location
- Bootcamp in Berlin to bring together teams from both countries, connect them to the Berlin ecosystem and help them further develop their solution
Project:
Accelerate MENA was a bilingual program (English – French) developed to inspire, build and connect social innovation ecosystems in the MENA region. Kicking off the program in Jordan and Tunisia, the project consisted of:
- Identifying key stakeholders and building an outreach network in Jordan and Tunisia including universities, existing projects, support institutions and innovation formats.
- 2.5-day ideation bootcamps in Amman and Tunis in English and French, in which solutions addressing SDG 12 and 7 were developed using Design Thinking.
- Impact Week in Berlin with the winning teams of each bootcamp to refine their solution developed and to connect them with each other as well as to the German social innovation ecosystem.
- Online mentoring for the winning teams.
Impact:
We believe that the best approach to address today’s challenges is to build and support local and global ecosystems of motivated people who want drive change. Innovation is not always Silicon Valley – Anyone can come up with new ideas that solve problems we face. Topped with inspiration, guidance, the right tools and skill set, these ideas can quickly turn into real projects with real impact.
Accelerate MENA equipped our participants with the tools to develop responsible and inclusive business models around challenges that matter – be it Sustainable Consumption and Production (SDG 12) in Jordan or Renewable Energy (SDG 7) in Tunisia – and connected them to the right stakeholders. By running two-day Design Thinking innovation bootcamps in Amman and Tunis as well as an acceleration training in Berlin, Accelerate MENA aimed to strengthen the MENA social entrepreneurship scene through three core elements:
- Inspire – Inspire individuals to get active and create solutions that have a positive impact
- Enable – Enable an entrepreneurial mindset to create sustainable business solutions using Design Thinking
- Connect – Connect the local ecosystems within and between Jordan, Tunisia, and Germany to scale
The participants developed several ideas ranging from using biomass to empower small towns in Tunisia by producing and selling their own energy, to building a co-creation space for artists upcycling plastic, or designing energy-efficient housing in the dead sea regions.
Insights:
>> Jordan
Design Thinking can unleash creativity in Jordan
There are a lot of highly motivated people in Jordan, especially young students, who are eager and motivated to get involved in starting an impact project. However, there are not enough creative offers that encourage ideation yet, and Design Thinking is still a new concept. Closely connected to that, Design Thinking experts and trainers are quite rare. During the workshop we were amazed to see how open the bootcamp participants were to the process and how much energy they put into the team and project work. The final pitches at the end of the workshop in front of a jury pushed the participants to develop their idea further – they were on fire!
Creative Workshops are nice; but follow-ups make the difference
Apart from the high energy of the participants, we were overwhelmed to see that many existing projects had an implicit impact focus already, especially in Amman and the surrounding areas. While there are existing support opportunities for young entrepreneurs in Amman, such as the Zain campus where our bootcamp took place, enpact or Oasis 500, follow-up support opportunities for early stage ideas are still rare. Although the level of motivation was high, participants who came to our bootcamp with an idea often struggled to create a business model making their project or startup financially sustainable. There is a big demand for developing a skill set to push ideas further.
Need for more business modelling to make ideas come alive
Concluding, especially in the early project stages ranging from ideation to follow-up support for projects that have not turned into a business yet, support and funding is lacking. We had the feeling that many good ideas were not followed up upon, as incubation or mentoring opportunities to work on the business side were missing. Design Thinking and co-working are slowly arriving in Jordan, but were not common buzzwords yet.
>> Tunisia
Female power!
Similar to Jordan, we loved how many female participants came to our workshop. The teams were very gender-inclusive and collaboration was highly encouraged. Although gender inclusivity and rights is of course still a big topic in the region, within the small context of our workshop and probably also within the younger age group it felt very natural to have diverse teams.
Strengthening Tunisia’s early-stage entrepreneurship ecosystem
Feedback we received from several ends indicated that the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Tunisia is still very early-stage with few players, support institutions and co-working spaces in the field. Especially amongst the older generation, becoming a founder is not yet as accepted as working for bigger corporates. Consequently, funding and investment is still a big topic and so is bureaucracy.
>> Want to know more or host your own program with us? Get in touch!