Poor nations are full of smart, energetic, and serious young people who want to acquire the skills they need to address the problems, but can't. Their knowledge gap persists in part because the global aid system has too often been unable to implement flexible educational processes effectively, particularly in technical areas with the greatest potential impact. InSTEDD's iLab pilot in Cambodia has demonstrated a new model for such sustainable capacity-building through the creation of Innovation Labs strategically positioned in poor and vulnerable regions globally.
Technology for social good has been a development theme for several years, but there are fewer examples of success than one could hope for. Reasons for that gap could include scant engagement of the potential users in the design phase, language issues have not been addressed, too little focus on capacity building and ownership, inadequate implementation metrics tracking confusion or irritation in the users, political issues within Ministries left unaddressed, or business partnerships not established in critical sectors. Each of these issues has been recognized by InSTEDD in efforts by others and is a surmountable issue through improved design.
InSTEDD has experience trying to ensure technical education efforts are designed appropriately. Over past years they have worked with young people who have explained their daily problems with transparency and accountability in civic life, about shortfalls in collaboration between Ministries, about persistent impediments to small business development, about failures in the delivery of medical care, about unfairness (and violence) related to gender inequality, about shortsighted choices in energy generation and building construction, and about the costs of failed cooperation between areas vulnerable to natural disaster, crop failure, and resource depletion. In many cases the problems seemed, at root, failures in information flow.
These young people were sometimes students, but others were already out in the workforce, trying to make a difference wherever they were. In most cases they were already looking for ways to leave their country, thinking they could never become effective at home.
After recognizing the ubiquity of these needs, InSTEDD began looking at how they could engage these young people more meaningfully, building capacity, teaching them to 'fish.' In 2008, the organization became deeply involved in a regional program called the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance Network. InSTEDD recognized early in that program the need to build locally sustainable innovation into any disease-monitoring effort they started, co-creating with Community Health Workers the needed tools and processes. That required InSTEDD's presence in villages, listening to ideas. However, they quickly found that innovative ideas would be more valuable if based on more relevant education. InSTEDD began teaching the necessary topics to the local youth.
That experience soon developed into an innovation incubator. Those first ideas became the pilot for InSTEDD's Innovation Lab in Phnom Penh, and soon crystallized the principles of user-centered design, adaptive teaching, and locally sustainable innovation.
Over the past year in the Cambodian pilot iLab, InSTEDD has taught advanced courses in software development, collaboration techniques, project management, and public health to a set of students who are now, in less than one year, beginning to establish their own designs. The students have already started working with multiple Ministries to create the tools needed to improve their country. Most importantly, they have stayed in Cambodia. The students have learned that they can be effective in their own nation, working on problems that matter to their own people. Those students are now creating applications to support patients with HIV, reduce maternal deaths in childbirth, and improve the bio-surveillance of animal and plant diseases.
Another benefit of the iLab is that it's developing a justifiable self-confidence in its students. They are proving that locally appropriate information flow can be designed, written, implemented, and analyzed locally for almost any topic. This can improve both the care that Ministries can provide for their citizens and the trust that citizens place in their Ministries. In this way iLabs are also strengthening governments that want to do well for their people and, at the same time, giving people tools to promote transparency and accountability in those governments. InSTEDD plans to continue this work by committing to open a new iLab in Zimbabwe.