Global Leadership Project - Day Three - The Process of Innovation

On day 3, we again headed off to more immersion visits. Today's kind organisations who hosted groups of students were:

Society for Community Organization

Society for Community Organization (SoCO) is a human rights pioneer in Hong Kong. SoCO firmly believes that everyone should be entitled to equal rights. Equal opportunity for participation and fair distribution of social resources is the foundation of human rights. In the face of the widening disparity between the rich and the poor, and the increasingly restrictive political arena, they stand firm in their crusade to establish an equal society and to build a strong power base for the people. SoCO are motivated by a common dream, and that is: "Let us work hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder to build a caring, equal and just society"

Crossroads

Crossroads Foundation is a Hong Kong based, non-profit organisation serving global need. They believe that, in a broken world that sees too much suffering, we should do all we can to link those who are in need with those who can provide help. So they provide an intersection, literally a crossroads, to bring both together. Crossroads’ Global Distribution provides aid for relief and development in over 90 countries, as well as in Hong Kong, and they also provide ‘business solutions’ for people in poverty: fair trade and social enterprises.


Sprouts Foundation

The Sprouts Foundation envisions a world where all children, especially the underprivileged, receive high quality education that helps elevate their lives and creates a positive future for our world. They aim to establish purposeful and effective long-term educational programmes, particularly in the fields of English language and technology skills. They commit to delivering high-quality programmes by closely monitoring the progress and development of their projects with teams of qualified educational specialists, and use the data they analyse from their programme results to offer ideas to education policy-makers in the regions where they operate.




Hong Kong Housing Society

The Hong Kong Housing Society (HKHS) is an independent, non-government and not-for profit organisation established in 1948, providing quality housing for the people of Hong Kong. Incorporated by Ordinance in 1951, HKHS has implemented various housing schemes to meet the needs of niche markets. Governed by Members with a Supervisory Board and an Executive Committee made up of professionals coming from different sectors of the community, we have been serving the Hong Kong community with a social mission.


1aspace

1a space, founded in 1998, is an independent, non-profit making contemporary visual art organization and art venue founded by a collective of Hong Kong artworkers. It moved from its original location an old government warehouse at Oil Street, North Point, to the current location at Cattle Depot in 2002. 1a space aims to promote the making, experimentation, exchange and dissemination of contemporary art both in Hong Kong and in the international arena.


Once again, the organisations we visited proved to be an incredible help to us in highlighting areas of social need within Hong Kong, and the information they shared with us was hoping us start to develop our idea for our final project.

We all arrived back from our respective visits, and after a quick lunch, got down to business.

We revisited our city maps from the previous day and added lots more information in. From there, the individual working parties set about identifying a social issue, and how they could use technology in an effort to tackle that issue. We then set about developing our ideas.

The group I was part of decided the issue we would like to tackle was accessibility and mobility for people with disabilities. We had noticed that accessibility wasn't well highlighted in Hong Kong, and whilst there certainly were ways to get around for disabled people, these weren't necessarily always highlighted. We came up with the concept of an app, similar to google maps, that would create a route mindful of accessibility requirements (so avoiding stairs and instead directing to lifts or escalators etc.). We developed our idea and brainstormed different areas such as features and functionality, how to generate revenue, the social benefits available from such an app etc.

We then developed a 2 minute pitch in order to present our idea to a group of external consultants who would be coming later. Our pitch started by identifying the social problem, outlining our idea in brief, outlining the main features, outlining the benefits, and finally acknowledging problems that may arise and how we planned to circumvent them.

Following our afternoon break, we were lucky enough to have external consultants come in to listen to our ideas, and use their knowledge (both of business and Hong Kong) in order to help us hone our ideas into something workable.

The external consultants we had were Andre Kwok (Founder, Future City Summit), Devi Novianti (Equal Opportunities Officer, Equal Opportunities Commission), Robbie McRobbie (CEO, Hong Kong Rugby Union) and Philip Niem (Director of Global Banking and Investment Solution, Bank of Singapore). The consultants listened to our pitches and gave us some fantastic ideas and areas for development, as well as helping to identify issues and helping us to address and solve them. We were extremely grateful for their input, and we had more ideas than ever on how to make our idea a success.

We finished the day by honing our ideas and ensuring our projects were in top form ready for tomorrow, our fourth and final day, where we would be fine tuning our presentations ready to present them to each other, as well as a panel of local stakeholders. We were all very excited to share our ideas with everyone!

On Wednesday nights in Hong Kong, we were told, students like to head to the local race course "Happy Valley". At ten HK dollars entry (about £1) and cheap drinks on offer throughout the night, this sounded like a great plan! Sadly, upon arriving, we found out that there were no races scheduled until the following Wednesday! And so everyone went out and about exploring again. Some people went to the beach, some visited Victoria Peak, and some headed out for some more retail therapy! Most of us ended up back at our accommodation at a reasonable hour for once, with the week catching up with use.