Solutions Insights Lab

A lot of social change talk revolves around diagnosing the problems. While this is a very important part of innovation and collaboration, it’s not what we do. Instead, we dig into what’s working and what practitioners are learning, taking a deep dive into insights around social entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and scaling innovations. And every month, we write a newsletter gathering up the big takeaways. Some highlights from the most recent edition: ‼️ “No risk doesn’t exist!” - Fabiola Zerbini of Conexsus - Instituto Conexões Sustentáveis exclaimed this during the discussion on how to rethink risk in climate collaboration and funding.  🤯 “I’m tired of talking about the concept. We need to talk about the reality we can present as an Indigenous community. We need to start counting in reality how Indigenous communities contribute.” - Bustar Maitar of EcoNusa Foundation, Indonesia on recognizing what Indigenous communities are doing.  🇮🇩 “We often want to copy European or US models. How can we share more lessons from Indonesia?” - Daniel Nardin of Amazônia Vox on understanding that the West isn’t the only region that has found success, and highlighting contributions from others that align closer to shared realities. Each of these came from the Advancing Climate Action through Solutions Storytelling event we hosted during #SkollWF where global leaders in climate action discussed how to better understand how partnerships can support investments and growth demand in two key climate regions: the Amazon and Indonesia. To get more like this from innovators around the world, sign up for the Solutions Insights Lab newsletter. We’ll deliver deep dives into recent conversations, information on upcoming events, spotlights on some of our most interesting and informative interviews, and more. Don’t miss another insight: https://lnkd.in/g2WHPFaE #climateaction #socialinnovation #whatsworking #climatefunding #Amazonclimate #Amazonrainforest #COP #Indonesiaclimate #sustainablefuture #greeneconomy #climatecollaboration Skoll Foundation

Thank you to Fundación Avina and Paula Ellinger for joining our #SkollWF event on advancing climate action! While there were many fantastic insights shared during the event, we loved it when Paula asked the much-needed question, “How do we ensure that policies and funds recognize how crucial it is to reach the local level when we talk about climate? Not all responses will fit the same everywhere.” Want to learn more about what WE learn about social change while conducting interviews and hosting events all over the world? Around issues like #climateaction #socialinnovation #impactfunding and more? Sign up for our newsletter and get these insights every month. https://lnkd.in/g2WHPFaE

“Abuse is not a technology problem,” said Marija Manojlovic of Safe Online. “But technology adds gasoline to that fire.” She was speaking last week at Oxford Union during the Skoll World Forum, at a standing-room-only event, co-hosted by Solutions Insights Lab, to advance bold initiatives that are protecting millions of children from sexual violence worldwide. (See the post below from ARPAN, one of our co-hosts, for more details.) Manojlovic was in conversation with Christoffer Rahm of the Karolinska Institutet, who pointed out that by the end of the event, 500 children will be abused. But as dire as the problem is, it has provable, scalable solutions. Rahm noted that his own program stops two-thirds of the potential perpetrators it reaches from causing harm. And before the event ended, Manojlovic and Rahm announced that they’d be launching a collaboration to multiply their efforts in keeping kids safe. Go to https://lnkd.in/dYCDkchD to read our full interviews with six inspiring leaders working to stop childhood sexual violence.

This week the Solutions Insights Lab is in Oxford, where there will be countless events in and around the Skoll World Forum. If you're in Oxford, too, don't miss Marmalade Festival, where our colleague Jessica Kantor will be hosting a workshop with Fundación Paraguaya and Poverty Stoplight (details below). And if you'd like to connect with the Lab this week, reach out to Ambika Samarthya-Howard.

“India can eliminate presbyopia—not just as a health issue, but as a barrier to income.” It was a pleasure speaking with Ambika Samarthya about The/Nudge Institute’s approach to solving poverty at scale. We discussed why we believe simple solutions like $2 reading glasses—when positioned as a livelihood intervention—can unlock massive impact, especially when powered by government systems and community networks. Appreciate the opportunity to share our thinking. Full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gYXEmPN7

The artist Raul Rodriguez is the creative mind behind most of the Solutions Insights Lab’s design elements, from our logo to the stickers we hand out at events. He just launched a delightful new art kit called Rock Painting Master Class: Botanicals, which includes all the necessary instruction and supplies to create your own artworks on stones, taking inspiration from his favorite Impressionist paintings at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. https://lnkd.in/erwfuXdy It’s a democratic approach to artmaking that we think resonates wonderfully with what we try to do at Solutions Insights Lab: bringing accessibility, useful tools, and beauty into the world.

It’s World Glaucoma Week, and here in Nigeria, Dr Oteri Eme Okolo MBBS, MSc (PHEC) FMCOphth, FWACS, the illustrious leader of the National Eye Health Programme, kicked it off Abuja style with an outreach turned dance party at the Ministry of Health. I'm Rollo Romig, manager of the Solutions Insights Lab, and this week I'm in Nigeria to study the work of Dr. Okolo and many others to put reading glasses on the faces of the hundreds of thousands of Nigerians who need them.

“Balance is when you’re trying to make it equal: left, right; dark, light. But harmony is when the parts don’t need to be equal, yet there’s still wholeness. For this moment, this is what’s needed. I would say that wellbeing is where there is capacity to adapt and evolve and to be able to regenerate, because that’s wholeness.” That quote is from Sarah Queblatin, the founding executive director of Green Releaf Initiative, and it speaks to the value of insights when it comes to helping everyone to thrive. Wellbeing is a global movement centered around reimagined societies with better health built on equity and belonging on a sustainable planet filled with cultural vibrancy. It’s a field that’s teeming with essential insights on how to create systemic change. And the Solutions Insights Lab has collected a treasure trove of such insights in an online index called Reimagining Society: Insights for the Future of Wellbeing: https://lnkd.in/e4dzk4zz Reimagining Society showcases interviews with leading wellbeing practitioners and powerful stories of the impact of their work. Uniquely, both the stories and conversations are structured around a solutions journalism lens. Solutions journalism explores a response to a problem and how it works (call it “the howdunnit”); evidence of its impact; insights others can learn from; and limitations or caveats to the success. At futureofwellbeing.com, wellbeing insights meet journalistic curiosity and global cooperation, under the umbrella of our common goals. So dive in to uncover the insight that will help you see your work — and maybe the world — a little differently.

Demond Drummer of New Consensus asks, “What will we as a people, as a society, as a community, as a world, decide to build together and grow together to make sure that everybody has what we need?” To find out, the Solutions Insights Lab interviewed nearly 100 movement-builders, leaders, experts, and practitioners who are working on wellbeing—the movement to build systems that value both people and the planet across generations. What we learned has lessons for everyone who works for social change. This new video highlights the key insights we found, each one a potential tool for your future work: https://lnkd.in/etR8fyGz And please visit The Future of Wellbeing to dig deeper into what these dozens of wellbeing leaders had to tell us. https://lnkd.in/e4dzk4zz

Partnerships are essential to every social-change project. And for many of the social innovators we’ve studied at the Solutions Insights Lab, governments are among the most important partners for scaling their work—including governments that might seem unlikely to help. “To do systems change work, it’s very difficult without government partners, and you have to overcome a certain level of cynicism about that,” said Chris Jochnick of Landesa, which helps families in India obtain legal land rights through digital records. “Even corrupt governments, even authoritarian governments are capable of doing good at times, and finding those opportunities is really critical. Finding those people within challenging governments that are influential and have the right mindset is really critical.” Governments change, sometimes in sudden, unexpected, and destabilizing ways. So the ability to keep working nimbly across government transitions is central to survival and success. “Agility and the adaptations that we have had to make, sometimes uncomfortably or sometimes under pressure, were needed because the government system works differently from when you are your own system,” said Lydia Wilbard of CAMFED - Campaign for Female Education, which supports the educational advancement of girls and young women in Tanzania, Ghana, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. “Sometimes, because we work with government officials, we have to build it in the budget to retrain, because there is no direct control of who will be in school this year or might move to another school where we are not working. We have had to be adaptive in terms of proactively budgeting for the retraining and reorientation that is necessary for the program to continue.” What’s Working—our database of hundreds of incisive interviews with the world’s most effective problem-solvers—is full of crucial, actionable insights on how to cultivate and navigate government partnerships for social change. Take a look here: https://lnkd.in/dZBmqxSJ