Listen and hear: how to increase the effectiveness of social innovations

Do you want to change the world, but don’t know how? We at UNDP Ukraine know about the transformative changes that social innovations can bring, and we have some advice for you on the matter.

Here are some useful tips and tricks that will help you understand how the effectiveness of social innovations can be brought to a brand-new level, and why social innovations matter.

Listen to me, please

Social innovations go way beyond technological advancements ­– they are designed to allow the voices of those whose needs are unmet to be heard and listened to.

If, for instance, your community is facing the problem of women being massively underrepresented in local government, then you’d do best to start talking to women who want to enter politics at the local level about what they want, and how they envisage addressing this particular issue.

The effectiveness of social innovations increases immensely once the key target groups are engaged in the process.

This is one of the many principles we taught proactive youths during the U-Inn Challenge (#UInn) initiative. This initiative united 541 young enthusiasts on dissuasion panels to collect the best innovative ideas on how to strengthen democracy and promote human rights in local communities.

It’s all about the right timing

The idea behind social innovations is very similar to an ambulance and paramedics being at the right place at the right time to administer a much-need pill to ease intense pain, or carry out a cardiac defibrillation, saving a life.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine puts people who live along the “contact line,” particularly women, adolescent girls and young men, in danger of sexual and gender-based violence.

To help people tackle these challenges promptly, the UNDP supported the development and launch of the “Your Rights” mobile app. This app not only provides vulnerable people exposed to sexual and gender-based violence with all the information they need, but also empowers internally displaced persons, giving them instruments to protect and restore their rights.

Looking for innovative ideas? Here, borrow mine

To make your innovation stand out, you need to dive into research first to learn about existing practices and initiatives, whilst adjusting your idea to its specific social context. However, you don’t need to make any scientific or technological discoveries to help your community.

Open data isn’t something new anymore, having been popular for quite some time, but it remains a top-trend in the realm of civic technologies. For instance, innovators from the Institute of Political Information developed a mobile app called Open Odessa to improve citizens’ access to information about local council decisions.

The app allows proactive citizens not only to find out about local council’s decisions — it also flags potential corruption risks these decisions might create. Want to check if local officials are trustworthy? Open Odessa will help you do it.

The app gives you access to local officials’ profiles, revealing how often they go to local council meetings and what decisions they support.

It also operates on an open-source basis, meaning that if an activist from another city wants to launch a similar initiative, they can simply modify the app’s code to align it with the particular needs of their community.

Social innovation works when it’s useful

One mistake innovators often make is to aim too high, trying create something utterly new, something that has never been done before.

What they tend to forget is that social innovation is fully effective only when it’s useful and can, to some extent, minimize scope of the problem.

The PolitHub was launched to keep citizens well-informed about politicians they’re voting for. It’s an innovative online-platform developed with financial support from UNDP to help people do a background check on the candidates they’re planning to support in the elections. Do you want to know more about these politicians? Do you doubt their trustworthiness, and want to check if they have kept their promises? You can find answers to these and many more questions at: PolitHub.org.

Text: Kateryna Tarasiuk | Photo: Andrii Krepkikh; Olexandr Ratushniak / UNDP Ukraine

Originally published at https://medium.com.