Sustainable Development Workshop by the Hollings Center for International Dialogue

The issues raised by the Youth, Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development project have taken on even greater significance with the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Economies around the world are contracting and youth, who were already experiencing financial difficulties prior to the pandemic, face even more uncertain employment and career prospects for the foreseeable future. The question this project posed remains highly relevant: what role can social entrepreneurship play in addressing the material, social and individual emotional needs of youth, especially in non-Western countries?

Due to the current health crisis, the project’s workshop at the Hollings Center, originally scheduled for May 2020, had to be cancelled. In its place, the YSESD proposes to hold a three part online workshop during the fall of 2020. The workshop will be divided into: 1) a project competition in social entrepreneurship; 2) youth social entrepreneurial projects; and 3) workshop assessment. The YSESD will engage in post-workshop dissemination of its results.

The project proposes to invite 40 youth social entrepreneurs from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and Pakistan as well as students from the Honors College, Rutgers University who will serve as Rapporteurs.

The target countries include Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

In addition to YSESD Director and PI, Dr. Eric Davis, Rutgers University, and the workshop co-organizers, Dr. Yass Alkafaji, Director Iraq Public Leadership Program, the American University of Sharjah; Dr. Nirav Patel, Director of the Forum, the Honors College, Rutgers University; Dr. Peter Valenti, Liaison to Social Entrepreneurship Studies, New York University and New York University-Abu Dhabi; Dr. Abid Ali, Data Science Program Faculty, Northwestern University; Mr. Berat Kjamilli, migport.com – Refugee Knowledge Sharing Platform, Istanbul; and Mr. Yousuf Abdelfatah, RAND
Corporation, Arlington, VA.

The co-organizers will assist in recruiting youth social entrepreneurs from the workshop’s regions of focus: Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt.

Project Competition Module:

The first component of the workshop will offer a Project Competition Module in mid-November 2020. As part of the Module, Dr. Davis and the Workshop co-organizers will ask the 40 participants to address critical issues facing developing countries by engaging in a competition to come up with solutions to critical questions posed by the offer presentations on YSESD project themes.

The competition will ask 8 participant teams of 5 members each – comprised of males and females and members of different national origins – to develop social entrepreneurial ventures which will address several key content areas:

1). Energy and Electricity Delivery (how can electricity be delivered in a more effective manner through social entrepreneurial ventures, how can such ventures improve the development of solar energy projects for residential and commercial usage);

2). Civic Engagement (how can social entrepreneurship help develop secondary and university level curricula which promotes a better understanding of citizenship responsibilities and rights, democracy promotion, and cultural and religious tolerance); public institutional capacity (strengthening the rule of law, human rights and fighting corruption and nepotism);

3). Gender Empowerment (changing societal attitudes towards women’s participation in the public sphere, improving the women’s ability to translate higher education degrees into career opportunities, and promoting child-care centers which allow women to pursue their careers);

4). Public Health (how can survey research improve knowledge of the public health needs of Iraq’s poor urban neighborhoods and villages, how can knowledge of vaccinations and other critical medical procedures be better disseminated, how can the expansion of health care clinics be linked to social entrepreneurship);

5). Environmental Sustainability (how can recycling be expanded to deal with better disposal or refuse and offer funds to poor communities, how can residents in poorer communities be helped to better access to clean water and improve local health conditions, how can social entrepreneurial ventures build on traditional methods of environmental sustainability to promote greater consciousness of the need to protect local environments).

In “breakout rooms,” each team will be given 30 minutes to develop their project ideas. Then, Workshop will discuss and evaluate the content of the proposals as to their originality and possibility of implementation. This project competition will not only engage the Workshop participants but enable the teams to decide on which of the 5 content areas they would like to concentrate in the second session of the Workshop in early December.

(Proposed dates of Workshop Session 1: November 12-13)

Youth Social Entrepreneurial Projects:

The Workshop’s Project Competition presentations will offer both substantive information in the form of conceptualizing youth social entrepreneurship and its role in promoting sustainable development, but also allow the Workshop organizers to assign themes for social entrepreneurial projects which the Workshop participant teams will develop between mid-November and the first week of December 2020. Working in teams of 5 participants, with an emphasis on gender balance and including youth from different countries, the projects will develop and then offer a short PPT presentation.

Each project developed by Participant Teams will be asked to incorporate an explanation of the project’s significance, what sectors of a country’s population would benefit from the project, and what financial resources are required to make the project a reality. Teams will also be asked to specify which local and international governmental agencies (IGOs), and international NGOs and foundations, would be appropriate targets for requests for funding.

(Proposed dates of Workshop Session 2: December 3-4).

Assessment:

The project organizers and participants will hold a final meeting to assess the Workshop’s outcome. An Assessment Rubric will be distributed on December 4 and participants in each of the teams will be asked to use the Rubric, or suggest adding a component which they feel is lacking, and then write a short report which will be circulated before the assessment meeting.

The Assessment Reports will be distributed prior to the final meeting and then be discussed by the workshop participants during the meeting. Workshop participants – organizers and students – will also discuss the manner in which the results of the workshop should be disseminated. The main ideas would to record the workshop sessions and then offer them for distribution after the workshop to appropriate organizations which support youth social entrepreneurship.

(Proposed date of Workshop Session 3: December 14)

Youth, Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development Workshop
Sponsored by the Hollings Center for International Dialogue
Istanbul, Turkey
Proposed Workshop Addendum
Eric Davis
Department of Political Science
Rutgers University
davis@polisci.rutgers.edu