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Innovation for Social Good

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How can you make a sustainable, positive impact in your community? That was the question the YES Thai Alumni Association (YESTA) addressed at a recent 2-day social entrepreneurship workshop in Bangkok. The training workshop, “Social Giver: Call Me a Change Maker,” was designed to introduce recent returnees (years 2013-15) to alternative options for framing and developing community service projects. The YESTA leadership committee was responsible for the development and facilitation of the workshop program for the 18 participants. Several alumni who had attended previous YES Alumni Social Entrepreneur Workshops also served as mentors and facilitators.

The main goal of the workshop was to demonstrate how new alumni can make sustainable, positive impacts in their communities through the concept of social entrepreneurship. Alumni participated in hands-on activities on topics such as crowdfunding, budgeting, creating a business plan, conducing needs assessments, formulating goals and objectives, and starting and sustaining social enterprises. The long term outcome of the workshop is to grow sustained community service initiatives run by the alumni.

Soc Ent Wkshop Group Circle

The workshop also incorporated a competition, which began by introducing participants to issues around 3 themes of interest to alumni: environment, education and empowerment. Participants were charged with developing an innovative project idea relating to one of the themes and pitching their idea to a panel of alumni mentors.

Soc Ent Organic Heaven Project

The winning ideas were:

Empowerment – Smart App: a mobile app that’s actually designed to reduce the use of mobile phones. The app records the amount of time the user is not using their phone and awards “points” which the user can redeem for rewards. This will help children and students to concentrate and hopefully motivate them to get more exercise, read a book etc.

Environment – Organic House: to introduce non-pesticide use and organic farming to local farmers and help farmers markets sell their products to the community. This will benefit both producer and consumer.

Education – Tech for Humanity: this project aims to develop an educational platform to provide equal educational opportunities to students in remote areas. Alumni are working to begin implementing these innovations by the end of the year.

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