Design-driven Program: Dare to Innovate

Design-driven Program: Dare to Innovate

The Brief.

US Peace Corps volunteers have been seeking to provide motivated and skillful young people with relevant tools and resources to accelerate social entrepreneurship in Guinea. The result is “Dare to Innovate: The Conference for Social Entrepreneurship.” With seemingly overwhelming social issues, Guinea is a country of great need and limitless possibility. The country possesses major resources, yet it hasn`t been able to benefit from its outstanding potential due to a series of challenges. In this context, social entrepreneurship can be the cure for Guinea. Dare to Innovate aims to help young entrepreneurs transform the socioeconomic challenges in their emerging market ecosystem into social enterprise ideas in Guinea by the help of design-centric approach provided by GEDS.

The Approach.

Considering the conference`s emphasis on creativity and social mindedness, the mentorship assistance made available by the GO Program was both practical and relevant for the participants. The design-driven methodology of the GO Program assisted the participants in three imperative points. This new lens enabled young Guinean entrepreneurs: > understand local ecosystem dynamics > effectively translate problems to sources of opportunities > transform local challenges into applicable and viable opportunities

About This Project.

According to Emma Schaberg, the Marketing and Communications Consultant at Dare to Innovate: “One of the most magical sights for me, as a facilitator, to witness was participants challenging other participants to change their own realities, believing that it’s possible by their own hands. They arrived at not only a deeper, widened perspective of their realities, but also of themselves in that context, seeing social problems as opportunities that they, themselves, may seize through social enterprise, providing for the community by also providing for themselves.” Dare to Innovate was mentioned in Stanford Social Innovation Blog, which is Stanford University`s award-winning magazine and website that covers cross-sector solutions to global problems.
You can read the article here: “Bridging Skills and Opportunities” https://ssir.org/articles/entry/bridging_skills_and_opportunities
Source: www.osezinnover.com