Seongmisan community is an urban community located within the City of Seoul. The residents in the area around a hill called Seongmisan have created a cooperative “village” model within the urban context, where faceless individualism and fierce sense of competition is prevalent. What is unique about Seongmisan community is that it was able to create a location-based, traditional “village-like” solidarity among residents through active participation and collaboration of community projects. The continuous trust and relationship-building among residents was the key to creating what proved to be an innovative and resilient community within an urban context.
© The Hope Institute
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“Ushahidi is a child of collaboration on the internet”
“Ushahidi”, which means “testimony” in Swahili, is a website set up by a collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis in Kenya, after the post-election fall-out at the beginning of 2008, to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phones.
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There are a few ideas that have been pretty uniform in the interviews we have been conducting, and reflections we’ve been having for the past few months…
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February 27, 2012 – 3:35 pm
This example of “what works” showcases a debt relief project that is more than just a game of numbers; it is about ensuring dignity for the poor. Here, the delivery of basic services is enhanced as a South African municipality connects with a community in a personalised and supportive way.
This is the first in a five-part series on the environmental innovation of the Impumelelo multiple award-winning e’Thekwini Municipality in South Africa. Read more about the creative ways South Africans solve public problems every week from the Impumelelo Social Innovations Centre, the country’s repository for solutions that improve quality of life for the poor.
© e’Thekwini Municipality
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February 6, 2012 – 3:11 pm
Hong Kong is a city known for its impressive skyline and a buzzing urban scene. In Hong Kong, the incessant urban renewals happening around the city has changed and shaped the space in which people live in as well as the memories of those who live there.
In this vibrant city, a small group of art curators, designers and cultural researchers formed a research and curatorial collective on vernacular visual culture and “indigenous” creativity called Community Museum Project (CMP) in 2002. The “museum” in the title refers not to the hardware – physical building where objects are stored and exhibited – but to the methodology of museum. CMP uses “museum” as a method to visualise community values, indigenous knowledge and social relationships.
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February 2, 2012 – 10:23 am
There have been many interesting projects that we have come across and many more that we have yet to uncover. However, from the work that we’ve been doing so far – speaking to people, organisations, Googling, Tweeting, LinkingIn and so much more – there has been an emerging trend that is really fascinating & gaining momentum.
One of the methods that we’d like to highlight is related to the booming gaming industry that is growing and making billions of pounds in profit, whilst becoming more and more sophisticated – related because it uses similar mechanics but different because these games have a social purpose. We’d like to introduce you to the exciting world of ‘games for social good’.
© The Young Foundation
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January 31, 2012 – 11:46 am
By Lucas Fülling
In early 2011 Euclid Network launched its second international social innovation competition – Naples 2.0 –, this time with a completely new focus. The idea of the competition was not to reward existing initiatives but use social innovation as a tool that can be applied to concrete problems in one of the most challenging environments of Europe: Naples to find new ideas to solve those problems. We wanted to drift away from definitions of the concept of social innovation but move forward and see how people can use their creative potential to come up with innovative and sustainable ideas to bring along social change.
Together with our partners UniCredit Foundation and Project Ahead we were exploring particular challenges in Naples where state and market had little success in solving them. They ranged from the use of public assets, to unsustainable business models of civil society organisations, to new methodologies for social problems, as for example the integration of Roma. The challenges were concrete but there was no prescription of how to solve the challenge. This led to a very diversified portfolio of solutions, from ‘Scamping’ – Camping with the Roma in Scampia (a very deprived district of Naples) to sustainable tourism in a confiscated Camorra (Naples’ Mafia).
© Euclid Network
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January 28, 2012 – 2:14 pm
The idea for Marianhill came about the mid-1990s before the Kyoto Protocol was even signed. Gunning for a conservancy status for the landfill from the start, e’Thekwini instituted a meaningful consultative process with residents and civil society.
Large waste removal vehicles travel to the smallest landfill of the e’Thekwini Municipality, located 31kms outside Durban, the capital city of the KwaZulu-Natal province. The Mariannhill Landfill only receives 450 tonnes of general municipal waste from the surrounding areas of Pinetown, Westville, Queensborough and Kloof. As these vehicles enter the site, a sign welcomes visitors to enjoy the birds and animals in the grasslands, forests and wetlands.
Bucking every waste management trend in South Africa, the Mariannhill Landfill Conservancy is a dump with a difference. At Mariannhill there are no unpleasant odours or a speck of litter strewn about. The site is separated from the surrounding middle-income and low-cost housing areas by only 200 metres of indigenous plants and trees.
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January 6, 2012 – 10:12 am
By: Ginny Lee
In our globalised world it is easy to go onto the internet to find out information about anything and everything. When you type in ‘social innovation’ into Google, the definition is very wide reaching, nebulous and all encompassing.
Where should we go to find out about social innovation?
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