UNLEASH: The biggest experiment in SDG Innovation
Imagine bringing together 1000 people from 1000 different places around the world representing different backgrounds, careers, specializations and life experiences, and guiding them through a 10-day process to work together on tackling some of the loftiest yet most important goals that humans have ever collectively set internationally.
If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, the logistics of feeding 1000 people in such a scenario is baffling, let alone guiding the process of going from 1000 buzzing ideas to a shortlist of implementable projects. But this is exactly what UNLEASH is aiming to achieve.
In a short week, I will be joining the first cohort of UNLEASH in Denmark for a 10-day immersive experience structured to design, develop and implement ideas that will translate Sustainable Development Goals into implementable actions. 1000 youth participants from every corner of the world, made up of engineers, health practitioners, fashion designers, city planners, engagement specialists, design thinking consultants, public servants, energy technologists, architects, and everything in between, will be working together on developing projects that move our planet closer to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This will take place in a different host country every year until 2030, the culminating year for the Sustainable Development Goals. These 1000 youth, or ‘SDG Talents’, as we’re being called, are all already working within the realm of sustainability in their own facets in their countries.
At the core of UNLEASH are all of the best and my favourite buzz words: Sustainability. Innovation. Design thinking. Social Change. Participatory design. Systems thinking. These buzz words scattered throughout the application are what caught my eye in reading about the process and what triggered me to apply earlier this year. I tend to operate in buzz words and the same words that make me cringe when I find myself using them simultaneously make my heart flutter a little bit, this being no exception.
UNLEASH is all about creating innovative projects that build off of the collective experiences and regional contexts of the participants. As with any process of ‘innovation’, we’re looking to build off of what is, look at where our planet needs to head and work in a new and different way to shape projects to land on the ground (won’t get into critics of the concept of innovation but read up this nice summary here). There are a few things that I really appreciate about the UNLEASH process already, and that make me hopeful of the projects that will emerge from the process.
One component that I really appreciate is that ideation and implementation are being discussed simultaneously. We aren’t creating projects to present on a stage and get a nice blue participation ribbon, but rather to create relevant, impactful projects that meaningfully identify a problem space and potential solutions. Throughout the process, we have access to experts and investors to build projects that are implementable.
Another huge piece that gives me huge hope for UNLEASH and more broadly for my generation, is that while much of politics and the world is becoming increasingly polarized, divided and wall-filled, UNLEASH is inviting youth to build bridges across regions, cultures, religions and collaborate on solutions that work towards a shared collective vision of the world. UNLEASH is also providing a platform to tap into one of the world’s largest untapped resources: youth. Youth who not only bring lived experiences, innovative energy, a desire for impact and their respective expertise; but who, above all, have a strong sense of urgency and responsibility to act on and address issues now.
What’s needed now more than ever, is a systemic approach to challenges of greater scale and urgency than ever before. Beyond applying a sustainability lens to all of our professions, we need experts to be able to sit at the same table and take from their unique worldly lenses they get from their microscopes, spectacles, data, students, collaborators or different conversations, to collectively strengthen the impact of projects and innovation. The Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, comprised of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets are lofty. They reflect the complexity of our time as well as that urgent need for complex, systemic approaches where silos are broken down. But much as what Naomi Klein talks about in ‘This Changes Everything’, the complex challenges of our time, like climate change, present an opportunity like never before to not only address these challenges but to work together in ways that transcend the end-goal and strengthen the means to the end.
Okay so how will all of this work at UNLEASH? Will this process work? Will we actually create impactful projects? I’ll keep you posted and let you know in 2 weeks.
For now what we know, is that all 1000 of us are being broken into smaller groups, each working on addressing a particular sustainability goal. I’ll be working with a team of people on the Urban Sustainability goal.
With over 50% of the world’s population lives in cities and a projected ~75% of the world’s 9 billion population living in cities by 2050, the role of urban areas as hubs for addressing these challenges will only be increasing. Urban problems are also increasingly complex, when considering infrastructure, housing, mobility, layered with social challenges like inclusion and affordability, layered with global challenges like education and climate change, both in adaptation and mitigation.
This is where my heart tends to beat a bit faster — cities magnify all of the challenges we collectively face, weather social, economic, political or environmental, but they also magnify opportunities to build hubs that are sustainable, liveable, inclusive and diverse places to live and thrive.
At the intersection of this very notion and the fact that youth are one of our largest untapped resources is what led me to co-found CityHive. CityHive’s mission is to transform the way that young people are engaged in the shaping of their cities. With major growth over the decades to come, cities (and some more than others) are in a highly transformative time; by engaging young people in civic processes like city planning, decision making and more broadly in urban issues, not only are we creating more democratically resilient cities where citizens are more likely to be engaged in the future as they grow older, but we are also creating cities that reflect the vision and needs of the generations that will guide our cities in this new urban era. When civic processes only include certain voices, the decisions that are made reflect the wants and needs of a certain population.
This past spring, CityHive co-hosted the first Vancouver 30Network with YouthfulCities. Together, we led 30 young urban leaders in Metro Vancouver to collaborate on housing solutions. These 30 diverse individuals worked together to learn from thought leaders and housing experts from across the region, identify spheres of influence and ultimately create impactful projects. Much like UNLEASH or any similar type of ‘think tank’ or ‘innovation’ process, you can do as much as you can to identify and get to know the problem and plan for a highly relevant and impactful project, but you have to be equally as prepared to fail as to succeed. Ideally, when you put resources into bringing people together, especially from all over the world, you want to maximize the impact of the outcomes, but great lessons come from building projects that don’t go as planned too, or much comes from the process itself.
I’m beyond excited and humbled to be part of the first cohort of UNLEASH. The ‘Process Nerd’ in me can’t wait to experience that very same process that we led through the 30Network: one built off lived experience, diversity, creative tension and a strong desire for impact. I’m looking forward to having my own ideas and views reshaped and enhanced by working with other young people from around the world. I’m gearing to work on a project that aims to narrow the gap between civic participation and government, somewhere on an urban scale and perhaps across cities; but I can’t wait to learn, be challenged and UNLEASH — yup, I went there — all of the collective knowledge to develop projects that will be large in scale and imact.
Most of all, I’m excited for the potential long-term and ripple impacts of UNLEASH, and to be a part of its very beginning.
A huge thank you to the UNLEASH Organization for the opportunity and support to attend and participate
