Social Innovation Camp Caucasus, Tbilisi, Georgia 8-10 April

Do you believe in social change in the Caucasus, want to make a difference, or have identified a pressing social need in any of the three societies, including on regional level, that needs addressing, but don’t know where or how to start?

If you answered yes to any or all of those questions then next month’s Social Innovation Camp (SI Camp) scheduled for 8-10 April in Tbilisi, Georgia, is exactly what you’re looking for.

Due to take place as part of the Social Media for Social Change conference at the same time in the same venue, SI Camp Caucasus will bring together ideas and participants from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to demonstrate how new online tools can empower individuals and strengthen the existing activities of social media for the first time in the South Caucasus. After all, the needs in the region are many, but the potential to implement change has been until now limited.

That, however, is all set to change.

Social Innovation Camp is about solving social challenges in new ways - by bringing together ideas and digital tools to create web-based innovations in just 48 hours.

First Social Innovation Camp in Caucasus will gather 40 participants - designers, entrepreneurs, social needs experts, marketing, legal, advertising gurus from Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia to work on an idea of a potential social start-up that can make a change and compete for a prize.

From environmentalists, youth activists, campaigners for equal rights and an end to discrimination on gender or aimed at minority communities — ethnic, religious and sexual alike — SI Camp Caucasus will bring the ideas together in teams made of participants that are all necessary for a project’s success. The idea might be good, for example, but how will you advertise it so society is aware it exists? How will you market the project to ensure its sustainability and anyway, what good is an idea if you don’t have a catchy name, an enticing logo or the technical know-how to make sure it works in the first place?

SI Camp is about solving all of those issues, creating a working prototype which, if successful, will receive seed funding to take further. Just as importantly, SI Camps are fun! Take a look at the recent CEE SI Camp in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, for example.

SICEE video from Kryscina on Vimeo.

Still not sure about ideas? Well, take a look at some of those submitted for previous SI Camps. In Scotland last year, for example, one idea submitted was to create a tool to make police accountable to the public, a very pressing need in the Caucasus, while another helped coordinate and organize volunteers with specific needs in society.

Meanwhile, at the Bratislava SI Camp, other ideas included creating a tool to address the problem of traffic violations in Ukraine, rating medical services so that patients feel more confident and aware of services on offer, assisting the elderly, or using Ushaihidi to map racially-motivated attacks, all something that could equally be applied to mapping environmental damage, tackling homophobia, empowering youth, or raising awareness of STI/STDs in society.

In Australia this weekend, for example, that is more than evident in ideas submitted and accepted to help refugees integrate in society, counterbalance an inadequate local media, and assist small food retailers or producers to offer higher quality and fresher products than supermarkets can to consumers. Again, all are pressing needs in the South Caucasus. Indeed, here’s what Social Media Guru and SI Camp co-founder Dan McQuillan had to say on the matter last year.

Although online campaigning is of interest to both journalists and NGOs, the real innovations will come from people thinking outside of those disciplines. If the web is going to catalyse in Georgia then people need to to think differently and feel more empowered.”

[…]

[…] At SICamp the development of the idea is totally in the hands of the team who’ve formed around it. They can change it and play with it. They can be spontaneous and creative. But this is serious play - they want to win, and to win they need to create something that will have real social impact.

SICamp and all similar hacktivist initiatives are using digital tech to break through the walls of resources and respectability, tapping straight in to people power by creating a space for free imagination. The liberatory potential of digital is that it allows us to do this without asking for permission. […]

It’s about bringing together the ingredients of geeks and designers, marketers and PR people, business people, and anyone else who is interested in or passionate about it. We mix them up and the mission is to take those simple ideas to produce working prototype projects from nothing in 48 hours.

The projects come from people’s own ideas of what needs there are, what really frustrates them, what really upsets them, or what really makes them excited. […]

Hear more from Dan McQuillan below:

Already identified a pressing social need in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia? Then, what are you waiting for? Submit an idea or apply to participate alongside recognized international experts in social media for social change at the SI Camp Caucasus at http://sic-caucasus.net. And while you’re at it, why not join the SI Camp Caucasus Facebook page or follow it on Twitter at #sicampc.

Hope to see you there!