DAVAO CITY (August 22, 2023) – Youth leaders from diverse backgrounds combined efforts to generate innovative ideas aiming to provide responsive solutions to their fellow youth anchored on United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, during the conduct of Ideation Lab, on August 17-18, in Davao City.
During the activity, participants delved into the concept of design thinking, an approach centered around empathy, ideation, prototyping, and testing which has been proven to be effective in setting a platform that encourages and enables young people to create innovative solutions addressing different and complex challenges in the Bangsamoro community.
The methodology enabled participants to empathize deeply with the pressing challenges faced by their fellow youth in their respective communities, a crucial first step in crafting effective solutions.
They were tasked with identifying a specific persona of youth representing unique needs and aspirations; they then work collectively to devise inventive answers to the identified youth concerns.
An integral aspect of the approach is the prototyping and testing phase, where the young minds transformed their ideas into tangible prototypes guided by mentors from Bangsamoro Youth Commission, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and members of technical working group for the Bangsamoro Action Plan on Youth, Peace and Security (BAP-YPS) who have experienced design thinking.
These innovative solutions were anchored towards the achievement of the SDGs particularly the goals identified in the BAP-YPS.
Youth were also introduced to integrate with their solutions the use of digital platforms through the Localizing e-Governance for Accelerated Provision of Services (LeAPS), a collaborative effort between the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government (MILG) and UNDP, which aims to revolutionize BARMM’s local governance by rapidly enhancing community connectivity.
This allows youth to advance their solutions by enabling citizens to harness digitalization’s advantages through better service access, information, community enterprises, and skills development.
The crafted prototypes were then presented to the organizers for pitching and providing feedback, allowing the participants to gather valuable insights to hone their ideas further.
Youth Co:Lab is a regional initiative implemented in countries in Asia-Pacific and co-created by UNDP and Citi Foundation. It aims to invest in XXX and empower youth to accelerate implementation of the SDGs through leadership, social innovation and entrepreneurship.
By developing 21st century skills, catalyzing and sustaining youth-led startups and social enterprises in the Philippines, Youth Co:Lab is positioning young people front and center in order to solve the country’s most pressing challenges.
In addition to supporting youth entrepreneurship, Youth Co:Lab also works closely with multiple stakeholders including governments, civil society and the private sector, to strengthen the entrepreneurship ecosystem and policy support to better enable young people to take the lead on new solutions that will help meet the SDGs.
Last year, Youth Co:Lab’s first ever roadshow Ideation Lab was participated by around 140 young people in three different cities—Baguio, Tacloban, and Cotabato.
Building on the success of the roadshow, including local partnerships, Youth Co:Lab is scaling the Ideation Lab across the country, seeking to engage more partners who can mobilize young people at the grassroots level, ultimately to expand and deepen UNDP’s reach especially those who are farthest. (BYC PR Unit/AAA)
