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Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.
Title
Please provide a name for your action learning plan.
Inclusive Solutions Mapping Knowledge Production and Dissemination
Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
EXPLORATORY
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Our challenge is that following our exploration in the context of urban resilience, we found that far too often, there is a gap between policy and practice. Billions of dollars have been invested in improving life and community resilience – specifically in combating water-related disaster. Yet unfortunately, most of the current policies is developed or implemented with little relevance to real life problems or contrary to communities’ needs.
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
When we started to explore on the nexus between water-related disaster and urban resilience, we found out that accommodation of community’s perspective and experience still needs to be improved. What is causing this is the gap between end users and policymakers, driven by the limitation of evidence-based policy. The current supply of evidence-based practices and programs that provide meaningful solutions for communities is thin. This challenge was raised by colleagues from DIPI Bappenas, who actually reached out to us in order to questions the relevance of policy made by the government for flood-mitigation, which was mostly in physical infrastructure-related interventions. If this situation keeps going, it will lead to the community exclusion from decision-making process and ended up in formulation one-size-fits-all solutions.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
Grassroots innovations have been rarely explored, but constitute one the most promising sustainability approaches. For instance, the Grassroots Innovations Augmentation Network (GIAN) — a part of The Honey Bee Network — developed a partnership with UNDP Accelerator Lab India to identify over 1,500 solutions and their innovators:
https://www.undp.org/india/blog/innovative-lessons-grassroots
In the field of waste management, for instance, around 1 billion waste tyres are generated every year, of which only 100 million are recycled. Similarly, manufacturing a single pair of jeans takes up around 8,000 litres of water and on top of this, high volumes of denims are discarded.
In this case, grassroots collaborations involving social enterprises and marginalized communities could potentially help to alleviate these issues through textile and tyre upcycling.
Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
Several reports have documented the importance of inclusive, community-driven innovations, such as the ESCAP’s report on Frontiers of Inclusive Innovation: Formulating Technology and Innovation Policies that Leave No One Behind:
https://www.unescap.org/sites/default/d8files/knowledge-products/Frontiers%20Inclusive%20Innovation_Report_FINAL.pdf
At the national level, Indonesian Law number 25 Year 2004 concerning the National Development Planning System in Indonesia states about the importance of community participation in development planning. This regulation has two reasons why community participation is an important aspect in development planning.
Community participation is also considered as one of the most important aspects in RPJMN 2020-2024
https://perpustakaan.bappenas.go.id/e-library/file_upload/koleksi/migrasi-data-publikasi/file/RP_RKP/Dokumen%20RPJMN%202020-2024/Lampiran%201.%20Narasi%20RPJMN%202020-2024.pdf
A policy brief has been published based on our study in several cities across Indonesia, which aimed at understanding the aspirations, needs, behaviors, and solutions in low-income urban communities regarding flood infrastructure. This study again confirms the importance of involving communities in designing solutions to development issues: https://www.undp.org/indonesia/publications/community-based-flood-risk-management-urban-areas-build-systemic-resilience
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
As an agile entity, the Indonesian Accelerator Lab is strategically positioned between policymakers, UN agency and communities to be able to reduce the proximity to deliver systemic transformation.
Solutions mapping and immersion are methods to build rapport and empathy with people and impacted communities to learn about their everyday lives, experiences, and context. The immersion method allows us to understand how realities are socially constructed from emic or insiders’ perspectives and conduct deep learning to understand "why people do things the way they do.”
Solutions mapping provides us with the sensitivity and ability to identify grassroots solutions, capacities, assets, coping strategies that have been developed or used by affected communities to address (emerging) development challenges. It also develops our understanding of how solutions and needs are paired, and how grassroots solutions can be used as an entry point to identify unaddressed or unmet development challenges. Bottom-up insights gained from solutions mapping and immersion methods are useful for informing decision-making,
At its best, solutions mapping tools can be used by people from marginalized communities (e.g., people with disabilities) to be active agents who can inform policymaking.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
UNDP Accelerator Lab Indonesia is collaborating with Design Ethnography Lab, Bandung Institute of Technology (DE ITB) in designing inclusive solutions mapping tools to facilitate deep understanding of contexts and systematically map grassroots solutions and their complexities.
Partners
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
Design Ethnography Lab, Bandung Institute of Technology (DE ITB)
What sector does our partner belong to?
Academia
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
DE ITB primarily supports in designing Solutions Mapping Canvas. The solutions mapping canvas consists of a practical guide, field notes and canvas that facilitates anyone to immerse themselves in community dynamics, identify and systematically map grassroots solutions and their complexities. The canvas is expected to provide a deep understanding of the aspirations, solutions, needs, challenges, and opportunities that exist in the community. The canvas is made as simple as possible so that it can be understood and applied by various groups.
To expand the reach of using canvas in an inclusive manner, there are several strategic steps that we want to take:
a. Design Inclusive Solutions Mapping Cards. The Solutions Mapping canvas will be redesigned and transformed into inclusive cards with contextualized, common glossaries and/or tailored to special needs. On-site consultation with communities is required to bring our Solutions Mapping cards to life efficiently and receive context-based feedback from communities.
Solutions Mapping Platform (Website). The refined tools, including the curated grassroots and social innovations, will be published on the Solutions Mapping website platform so that they can be accessed by the wider community.
Solutions Mapping Dissemination Event. Our learnings will be disseminated publicly to introduce our Solutions Mapping tools and highlight the importance of mundane and daily solutions to communities. The dissemination event aims to provide an exciting and stimulating setting for an enjoyable and worthwhile learning process about Solutions Mapping and Immersion methods.
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
Yes
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
Komunitas Teman Tuli
What sector does our partner belong to?
Civil Society
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
Komunitas Teman Tuli is a social community consisting of deaf and hard of hearing people, which strives for public education on deaf culture and sign language. In this collaboration, members of Komunitas Teman Tuli are engaged as both participants in a solutions mapping workshop and prospective users of solution mapping tools, who can then work to identify grassroots solutions to inform policymaking.
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
Yes
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
1. What are the ways to reduce the proximity between policy and reality?
2. How can inclusive policy design be translated into actionable outcome through co-creation with government, CSOs and affected communities?
3. How can we enable community participation through the empowerment of grassroots solutions and innovations?
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Sense, Explore, Test
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
We will apply mixed methods in designing and disseminating our inclusive solutions mapping tools:
a) Immersion / ethnographic method is carried out by visiting a location to understand and experience the local context in depth through participant observation and informal conversations with the local community.
b) Co-creation method and design thinking are carried out by collaborating with visual artists, innovation actors, local translators, web designers, and affected communities in designing, prototyping, and disseminating the inclusive solutions mapping tools.
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
To date, there has been a lack of data on how communities come up with daily solutions to address their problems or needs, let alone the ways in which these solutions can inform government policymaking. This will be addressed through conducting immersion / ethnography involving grassroots communities. Meanwhile, co-creation and design thinking will be helpful in generating new tools (i.e., solutions mapping cards, website, and event) as different platforms to disseminate new insights and findings regarding community-driven innovations to the broader audience, including communities in other geographical locations and government agencies.
Closing
Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?
The tools can be diversified into any kind of form – including what’s been planned by us: cards and website platform. The solutions mapping cards is formulated in simple, easy to understand text (without jargon), contextualized, and illustrated art. We have tested this with grassroot community and district officials during our mission in Larantuka, East Nusa Tenggara. In addition to that, to make the tools even more inclusive, we are planning to conduct another prototyping – this time with disability community in Bandung, West Java. No one is left behind in the process. Besides, the Solutions Mapping Platform (Website), is a bottom-up effort to connect grassroots innovators, government, and other stakeholders in developing inclusive strategic planning for resiliency. This website platform is planned to be accessible for public and different kind group of communities (youth, low income, disability, etc). Potentially, the website platform can be a space for relevant stakeholders, including government agencies, to scale available socio-cultural infrastructures that’s been available within communities. In spirit of knowledge sharing, we are also planning to have a dissemination event to share our process of learning with communities to provide basis for relevant stakeholders, the government, to practice deep understanding of aspirations, solutions, needs, challenges, and opportunities that exist in the community, through the solutions mapping tools.
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9Industry, innovation and infrastructure
10Reduced innequalities
11Sustainable cities and communities
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