What good could we do with a $100k grant?
A story about bringing together innovators to create a sustainable future for all.
It’s just passed 7pm. It’s pouring outside, to nobody’s surprise. It’s late October in Vancouver — and is especially wet at this time of the year. We’re standing in front of 30+ people and about to spark a conversation about sustainable future — a topic that most people cringe about. For most people it’s a combination of anxiety and perception that there is nothing they can do about it.
And we were there to change that.
The Hypothesis
Given our professional background (education, communication, design, facilitation, entrepreneurship) we believe that by combining the right people with the right tools, we can collectively tackle any issue. By taking this initiative, we can reclaim power and change our collective mindset.
When tackling the issue of sustainability, we looked at the existing efforts and centred around thinking around UN’s 17 Sustainability Development Goals, and, specifically, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all UN Member States back in 2015. The agenda provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.
The Innovation Workshop
We created an open call for all creatives to join us for a highly interactive 3-hour workshop to put their minds together to generate solutions on how we might best mobilize the design community as a powerful force for good in Vancouver. With the theme of progressing Canada’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Future further, we introduced an Innovation Mashup Tool to generate ideas and solutions for one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Participants were put into groups of 3–4 people and given a simple agenda — using Innovation Mashup Tool, generate ideas for tackling one of the 17 SDGs, then pick and refine one that they thought is something they could run with, if they received $100,000 in grant funding made available by Service Canada to promote the 2030 Agenda.
Unlike with many hackathons, BIG17 hosts events aimed to educate and inspire individuals to elevate their leadership by providing a clear pathway to not only generate ideas, but to also take actions that will make a real difference.
Innovation Mashup Tool
Mash-ups is a collaborative idea generation method in which participants come up with innovative concepts by combining different elements together. In a first step, participants brainstorm around different areas, such as technologies, human needs, and existing services. In a second step, they rapidly combine elements from those areas to create new, fun and innovative concepts. Mash-ups demonstrates how fast and easy it can be to come up with innovative ideas.
The Outcome
Each teams of participants took turns at pitching their ideas to the rest of the group, and then voted by Dotmocracy to decide which idea appears to be the most viable. We then challenged the winning to apply for the grant and they took it on! Even though the timeline was tight, Andrew MacDonald, Maria Verdicchio, Lucy Cameron, Lily Wang, Wendy Wang and Kamila Suchomel took the lead to draft out grant proposal for a project called Connecting Kids to Universities.
Connecting Kids to Universities(CKU) is a simple, on-line platform aimed at establishing, fostering, and encouraging collaboration on SDG-related research between post-secondary researchers and elementary education programs delivered on indigenous reserves. The program matches researchers and/or research teams working on projects that provide solutions and insights in relation to the 17 UN SDGs with students ages 8–11 from historically marginalized communities across Canada.
While we have not yet heard back from Service Canada, our goal to bring community together and create the space for innovation and action towards a more sustainable future was accomplished. The event was a fulfilling experience that we are looking forward to hosting again on May 6 2020.
The BIG17 Collective
BIG17 is a growing collective of designers who are passionate about creating a positive impact by joining a global initiative started by United Nations to create a sustainable future for all, by contributing to the fulfillment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Between full-time jobs, freelance contracts, family, masterclasses, and business ventures, taking on a non-profit project can be challenge. What could you possible get done with 2 hours / week you’ve got spare? Hardly anything. But as soon as we bring community together, those 2 hours become 4, 6, 8… And all of a sudden, we have a team who chips away at a bigger goals while supporting each other — and you’ve got something bigger.
And that’s how BIG17 was born. Based on the few simple principles of MVP, accountability, collaboration, and trust, we created a collective of like-minded people who are passionate about creating a positive impact by joining their technical and creative skills for a greater cause.
