Chhalphal Online Media

Kathmandu : A 9 day-long social innovation bootcamp, UAE-Nepal Connect, UNC2017, organized by INNOCO and Nepal Youth Cluster from June 2-10 at ICA Training Center, has been completed. The program was organized in partnership with Leadership Corner, HCI, Nepal National Innovation Center, Nepal Communitere from Nepal, LAGI from USA and Zayed University from UAE.  INNOCO is a platform that cultivates youth to become social innovators. It means innovation co-designing through connection + collaboration + contribution. By connecting youth to local and international communities through project-based learning, INNOCO fosters these collaborations to help youth contribute and transform their lives and others for a greater good as social entrepreneurs and facilitators.  The main objectives of bootcamp was to generate big ideas through design thinking experience, learn how your innovation space works, understand the relationship of innovation space and biz model, exercise how to create experience innovation, refine social business model canvas, and pitch a biz idea. Last year, INNOCO delivered a 6 days UNC2016 Bootcamp, with an objective of creating Nepal Youth Cluster (NYC) which will lead the coordination and implementation of future activities. 20 youth participated from Leadership Corner, Volunteer In Nepal, and Choice Humanitarian in Nepal, and Zayed University in the UAE. During the 6 days, participants built their confidence through creative approaches in social innovation. It included case studies and field trips to provide them a base for deeper understanding of social enterprise. The bootcamp culminated in the cluster of 6 youth from Kathmandu; Monica Amatya, Saroj Basnet, Prachi Badu, Pabitra Majhi, Bijay Sunar, and Shaheera Pandey. The role of the cluster is to grow agents of social change, under the guidance of INNOCO in order to co-deliver UNC2017. The facilitators and contributors were from Korea, India, Lebanon, USA, France, and Nepal. The bootcamp was aiming to answer the challenge, ‘How Might We Create Social Innovation in Nepal?’. 56 applications from professionals and university students in Kathmandu and various rural districts were reviewed and 19Nepali youthwere selected to participate in the camp. NYC played a pivotal role in the application process. The camp was started with Mahabir Pun, a leading social entrepreneur figure in Nepal.  During first three days, the participants worked on the food system theme where they practiced empathy tools and the process to create social business. They visited Patale Gaun Organic Farm facilitated by Saurav Dhakalin on Saturday, 3rdJune. Participants interviewed the farmers and families, and used the data collected to form their empathic understanding of the problems and to help them clarify the challenges and gaps. Throughout the week, participants worked on their own social business ideas such as women empowerment, agriculture, eco-tourism, waste management, and child education. Participants were inspired by local and international social innovators through a Talk Series; Robert Ferry (Land and Art Generator Initiative), Prashant Singh (Himalayan Climate Initiative), Madan Rai (eco-tourism activist), Bikram Pun (Mushroom King), Sandeep Paudel (Elam at Helvatas), and Hadik Subedi (No Thanks!) The participants also learned how to build model their enterprise using the Social Business Model Canvas (SBMC) and assisted by hands-on activities such as value challenge, site research and interviews to validate their assumptions. Yunsun Chung-Shin, Joanne Renaux, Sara Shedid, Robert Ferry, and Amin Matni facilitated the formation of 10 social enterprise ideas to pitch to the invited panelist from various local stakeholders.  After successful completion of the bootcamp, Sajana Badel, one of the participants shared, “This bootcamp helped me to understand how social business works and how it creates impact on our society”. Similarly, another Participant Shashank said that this bootcamp provided him an opportunity to learn how to establish social business. As a supporting development for NYC and these 10 social enterprise leads, INNOCO is organizing the Social Innovation Think Tank gathering, which will take place on 12th June at Nepal Communitere hosted by Bahar Kumar. It is expected through this collaboration the next steps towards social innovation in Nepal, will be co-created.  - See more at: http://www.chhalphal.com/en/news/5259#sthash.oHTQOC7O.dpuf