A crash course in changing the world.
To be a social innovator there is not really one secret that makes the difference.
For me, first of all it is very important that "Problems are not always obvious from afar". You want to go out there and save the world? Then go out there and see it with your own eyes. Crucial to every successful innovation is that you have to talk to the people, listen to them, and really really go there and live like them. Only then you will find something new they lack of and what could really help them to improve their lifes. Just sending money will never be enough.
I also think that this top-to-bottom management is the reason why so many well-intented, very promising development programs fail. Either because they lack of local knowledge of the situation or because they do not communicate well enough with locals.
What is more, you just can't fight the culture. A very good example for this point is the failed project from the Norwegian government who aimed to built Lake Turkana, a fish processing plant in Kenya to provide jobs to the Turkana people through fishing and fish processing for export. So what went wrong? The Turkana are nomads with no history of fishing or eating fish. The plant was completed and operated for a few days, but was quickly shut down. The project cost about 22 million which were sadly just wasted. This wouldn't have happened if the donors would have gone there, talked to the people. If they had done this they would have figured out, that there was no potential for fishing. This example also goes for "Provide skills, not just finished technologies". Though a lake is not a technology the Norwegian government would have needed to assis the Turkana by showing them how to fish.
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