A Fresh Conversation: Technology for Social Impact
A ‘Bridges & Boats’ Series Event, Article by Jaya Myler
How can we leverage technology to make a difference in lives across Asia Pacific? This is the question that brought together a group of multi-sector participants at the second ‘Bridges and Boats’ event, convened by Asia P3 Hub, and hosted by and in partnership with thebridge co-working space on Tuesday 16th October.
The intimate event explored how technology and social media are being used to deliver social impact, essentials for organisations to collaborate across sectors and disciplines, and set out to ‘demystify’ blockchain technology. Asia P3 Hub’s Christy Davis introduced the bridges and boats concept, and how the Hub’s combinatorial innovation approach uses this concept, followed by three inspiring speakers who shared how the concept relates to their work, what technology means to them and how they’ve applied technology for greater social impact.
Here are some highlights of the vibrant discussion with Ramya Ravikumar, Head of Business Development at Anquan, Rebecca Lim, Head of Our Better World, Singapore International Foundation, and Wayne Chia, Innovative Programmes Lead of Asia P3 Hub (hosted by World Vision International), moderated by Teymoor Nabili, CEO, TheSignal.Asia.
When We Use Technology To Connect, We Can Achieve Greater Impact
Rebecca spoke about how technology combined with storytelling, has the power to reach people and motivate them to action. The organisation inspires action through storytelling and combines the ‘art’ of storytelling with the ‘science’ of social media and online platforms in order to reach more people and achieve a greater impact. You can craft a powerful story, but if you don’t know how to distribute it, it won’t reach the right people.
She shared the example of Angel Gowns Singapore, a non-profit that makes outfits for premature babies, stillborns or infants who have died. A powerful video crafted by Our Better World used animation, video of volunteers and the story of one recipient, and inspired people resulting in a huge surge in volunteer enquiries to the charity, up to 340 volunteer enquiries in a month, from an average of 10. “Stories are narratives of human experiences, they are powerful and they move us. And everyone has the power to make a difference. Take these two beliefs and add technology and we can inspire action to the masses through stories.”
Cultural Understanding Is Crucial to Motivate
In order to inspire action it’s important to understand motivations, and these differ from country to country. Rebecca shared some findings from Our Better World’s research, which found that country messaging needs to be different. In Singapore, audiences are motivated by social welfare: they take action because they believe it’s their responsibility to do so. By contrast, in India, it’s about social change. However, some themes or stories are universal and can inspire action across national boundaries. Research needs to underpin storytelling in order to understand how stories can be told in a way that will trigger desired action.
Understanding the local, cultural context, on the ground and in the field — the start of the supply chain as mentioned earlier — is also crucial for the success of blockchain applications.
Another participant asked a question about culture, how to get people to use a tool that promotes transparency and accountability when their cultural mindset is not one that accepts this as the best way to work, and further they’re not personally motivated to do so. Ramya gave an example of a top-down approach that has worked in projects in other countries, where governments introduce incentives to companies to ensure their buy-in. But this is a question to unpack and explore for another time as well: what to do in those contexts where standard practice across sectors, organisations and individuals is not built on trust and transparency but on other incentives.
The Application Of New Technology Requires A Cultural Mindset Shift
Ramya set out to demystify blockchain for the group that included participants from the public sector, NGOs, the corporate world and academia. Blockchain is distributed ledger technology — the key word is distributed — meaning that there is no central body. Rather, there is a full community of participants that form a consensus on a method of verifying the validity or legitimacy of a transaction. “It sounds easier than it is. Think about how challenging it is to form consensus even within one organisation,” she said.
There has to be a cultural mindset change with the way that companies work not just internally, but bridging to ecosystem and community thinking. Teymoor added that blockchain creates communities, clustered interactions, and network effects. Ramya agreed: “It is a technology of trust, it is one piece of the puzzle for how technology can have a social impact.”
Blockchain Applications Can Ensure Transparency And Traceability
Ramya delved into how blockchain technology can bring transparency and traceability across an entire supply chain. She gave the example of a client, one of the world’s largest rubber companies that had a supply chain challenge. They wanted to prove that they were tapping rubber plants in an ethical and sustainable way. They believed that they were, but they didn’t know how to demonstrate this to the end consumer. She shared that often people in headquarters don’t understand what’s going on at the start of the chain, and likened blockchain technology to shining a torch on the whole supply chain.
Wayne reflected on how blockchain adds a lot more transparency to the entire system. Most companies when asked to prove they’re sustainable, could declare they have a sustainability accreditation, and say “my supplier is sustainable,” but in actuality can only prove they are sustainable one to two, perhaps three supplier layers deep. Usually no one is going to the farmers, or the start of the supply chain to verify it. Blockchain, if done correctly, allows you to trace the whole length of the supply chain. The most robust system is useless if you feed in bad data — garbage in, garbage out. How do we get everyone in the supply chain to buy in, and agree to be on the blockchain? And ensure that good information is being inputted right at the start? It might be a technology infrastructure disruption, or a human behaviour change disruption that’s required.
One participant asked how and why a blockchain application might be the right technology to look at the rice supply chain. How can you demonstrate the sustainability to the consumer of something as common and low value as rice? Ramya responded that if a challenge is global, if it’s complex and has multiple countries, then a blockchain application is likely to be suitable. In fact, the more complex it is, the better the use case for blockchain applications, but implementation would be harder. Although most people are familiar with the use of blockchain technology for financial services, like cryptocurrency, the key applications actually lie outside of this sector. Blockchain is ideal for tracking supply chains, and addressing food fraud, but you need to find the right verifiers, and preferably someone that doesn’t have any ties to the industry, like an NGO.
Adoption Only Occurs When The Benefit Is Clear
Teymoor asked when would we reach the tipping point for the adoption of blockchain technology. Ramya said it isn’t just about whether technology works, large-scale adoption will only occur when the benefit is clear. For example, we don’t question smartphone technology or the technology present in so many tools that we use on a daily basis. Once blockchain applications have obvious benefits to end consumers, adoption will be much more widespread.
Don’t Be A Hammer Looking For A Nail
Wayne talked about how the team, together with World Vision offices in Asia, uses innovative ways to solve problems in the field, and went back to the definition of technology to show how it can have a social impact. Technology by definition needs to solve a problem, and be a useful tool. As technology is being adopted more and more by the NGO sector, crowdsourcing and social innovation challenges have become the go-to, however many of them result in solutions looking for a problem. He discussed how crucial it is to have a well-defined problem statement: “Don’t be a hammer looking for a nail.”
He shared a video from World Vision, part of an upcoming Social Innovation Challenge that Asia P3 Hub is working on in partnership with families in the Philippines that are struggling to source clean water. The challenge presents the problem statement: “How might we make potable water accessible to far-flung communities?” Technology has been used to define the problem and will be used to develop and implement a solution. It enables innovation challenge participants to see through the eyes of the community, allowing them to feel empathy — a crucial component of human-centered design. The challenge will be hosted on an online platform and allow participants to get as close to reality as possible through technology, and they will also use technology to interact throughout the process.
Participant Jose Luis Jimenez, World Vision Asia Pacific’s Senior Director of Operations also reflected on how the development community can take advantage of technology both to better define problems and as a vehicle to solve them.
On Being Bridges And Boats And Partnering Across Sectors
Christy Davis spoke about Sujin Jang’s Bridges and Boats concept, and how Asia P3 Hub took the concept and expanded and adapted it to apply to multi-sector, multi-country, multinational, multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary ways of working to spark more innovation and greater results.
‘Bridges’ are people who have lived and worked in the different contexts of the partnership and can speak the languages of the different actors and facilitate bridging of perspectives and understanding. ‘Boats’ are third culture individuals who can discern and ask probing, thoughtful questions across different partners and their contexts.
Ramya mused about the importance in her work to have the language to explain complex ideas (e.g. blockchain applications) to people from different backgrounds and industries. Anquan as an organisation bridges the gap between academia and the business world, and Ramya herself is not a tech person, but she has a multi-sector background which allows her to act as an effective bridge between different types of stakeholders.
Rebecca shared how Our Better World is cross sector — it sits at the cross-section of media, non-profit, tech, and market research. Storytellers need to have a cultural understanding and sensitivity across sectors and with the people whose stories are being told — indeed, functioning as bridges.
Wayne spoke about how Asia P3 Hub is focused on multi-sector partnerships, and bringing different sectors together to solve problems in Asia Pacific. Wayne also has a tech background so he brings multi-sector experience to his role.
We Need Safe Spaces To Come Together
Rebecca reflected on the need to bring players together from various sectors to meet at an intersection of interests, the “sweet spot,” and bring their talents to the non-profit sector to achieve greater impact. With the way technology is evolving, the need is greater than ever to build capacity and capability in bridging across sectors to employ new tools and platforms built for corporate purposes that can also be leveraged for non-profit contexts.
Asia P3 Hub is championing an ecosystem of individuals that are intentional about navigating the complexity of multi-sector environments, and convening a safe space for diverse and perhaps unlikely people to come together and explore how resources can be pooled to create a multiplier effect. Christy said: “We all have something to contribute and want to contribute something to make someone else’s life better. How do we offer and contribute what we’re good at and pool our resources to share both risk and benefits, and achieve a multiplier effect of goodness? It is so important to create safe spaces where unconventional but dynamic people can come together and have the security to be vulnerable and open themselves up. That’s where Asia P3 Hub comes in, we offer that safe space and play a convening role.”
ABOUT THE EVENT SERIES
Bridges & Boats is an interactive conversation for the multi-sector partnership ecosystem in Singapore. It provides fresh perspectives and new angles for navigating complexity, focusing on mindset shifts and practical skills needed to accelerate and encourage successful partnerships that achieve sustainability and innovation. Bridges & Boats acknowledges that many complex challenges in the world today cannot be solved by one sector alone. Business, government, academia and non-governmental organisations working together can harness the power of diverse resources to tackle the problems we face.
The first event in the series, A Fresh Conversation on Partnering: The Need for Bridges & Boats explored the concept of bridges and boats, and how the concept can be extended to bring value to multi-sector collaborations. Stay tuned — there are more Bridges and Boats events scheduled in the year ahead.
Do you have an idea or a theme for a future Bridges and Boats event? Let us know!
Article was written by Jaya Myler, Asia P3 Hub’s Communications and Marketing Consultant.
Jaya Myler is a non-profit manager with more than 12 years of experience working with international NGOs, corporate and consumer brands, in both developed and developing country settings. She has a strong background in managing projects and programs, and advocacy and communications, and experience working in environmental, education, and WASH NGOs. She is passionate about water and sanitation, education and poverty alleviation. She has experience working on multi-sector partnerships with NGOs, corporates, academia and governments, and is a big believer in the power of cross-sector collaboration to drive innovation and achieve impact. She holds a Master of Media Practice.
