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Tuesday Mar 04, 2008
Get your thinking hats on
As I’ve mentioned before, the voluntary sector is facing more and more competition from the private sector to deliver innovative solutions to complex social issues.
This calls for a spirit of collaboration and openness, between charities, sectors and disciplines (and, of course, some extra cash never hurts…). A couple of examples of ways to encourage and facilitate this collaboration have come to light recently.
The first is the Innovation Exchange, which aims to “improve the relationships between third sector practitioners, public service commissioners, social investors and policy makers.” The Exchange has already attracted a pretty heavyweight list of contributors and should spark off some interesting debate.
The second is the Social Innovation Camp, which takes place between 4th and 6th April. Their website poses the slightly scary question:
“What happens when you get a bunch of software developers and social innovators together, give them a set of social problems and only 48 hours to solve them?”
Answers on a postcard please.
It’ll be interesting to see what projects and collaborations fall out of these initiatives – it’s also great to see more of a unified approach to tackling social issues.
Posted by Sam Thomas ( 10:33 AM ) Link to this post Comments[4]