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Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed.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.
Strategic Ecosystem Innovation for Women's Economic Empowerment
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...”.)
Currently, many institutions within the development ecosystem are focused on supporting women's economic empowerment. However, almost each institution has developed its own solution without analyzing what the ecosystem offers and what has worked or not and therefore there is no enough impact on women economic empowerment.
Our challenge is to identify a portfolio of innovations for an ecosystem that generates impact on the economic empowerment of women. For that we will consider an evidence-based gap map and the current solutions that ecosystem is implementing (both digital and non-digital solutions). This will aim to compare gaps with current solutions and to identify potential innovations to improve impact on women. Both, the map and solutions are intented to be mapped collaboratively wiht ecosystem organizations, as well as the analysis to compare gaps and current solutions.
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?
Even though some institutions have made efforts to strengthen the ecosystem by conducting ecosystem diagnoses, sharing information, and connecting institutions , there have been no substantial changes in the way projects are implemented or in the collaboration between institutions. Consequently, there have no been significant impacts on women. To enhance these efforts to strenghten the ecosystem, the Acc Lab has identified an opportunity to empower the ecosystem by making the main gaps in women's economic empowerment and current solutions more visible. It is expected this will help organizations realize if current solutions are working or not to close gaps and to identify new approaches to address these gaps as well as new ways to collaborate.
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.
A study conducted on the entrepreneurial ecosystem (Yo Emprendo Bolivia, 2020) identified a total of 111 actors. Among the surveyed institutions, 73% reported conducting training or workshop activities, 58% were engaged in awareness-raising initiatives, and 47% offered mentoring services. Notably, 52% of these actors were involved in activities that spanned across four or more intervention areas, signaling a relatively low level of specialization.
In terms of coordination within the ecosystem, data from the report revealed that 59% of the actors considered it to be deficient and poor. They attributed this deficiency to challenges in coordinating with other actors, a lack of integration of activities, the prevalence of self-promotion and economic interests, as well as a shortage of funds.
These described characteristics provide indications of an ecosystem in its early stages, grappling with various challenges and limitations. It is characterized by the absence of public actors, individual private actions, and conventional support activities, which have a limited focus on innovation and impact.
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.
Despite the diagnoses with quantitative and qualitative information about the ecosystem's activity, there hasn't been much change in the activities that each institution carries out, nor in the interaction between institutions.
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?
By bringing visibility information about gaps in economic empowerment for women, along with existing solutions, and by fostering dialogues between ecosystem's organizations based on this information, we will foster collaboration, sharing ideas and knowledge to build an innovation portafolio to address the identified challenges
By increasing the visibility of information about gaps in economic empowerment for women, along with existing solutions, and by facilitating dialogues among organizations within the ecosystem (based on this information), we will promote collaboration, ideas sharing and knowledge exchange to develop an innovation portfolio aimed at addressing the identified challenges
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
Efforts towards the economic empowerment of women are not yielding the expected impact. Ecosystem's institutions are developping an evidence-based portafolio for innovation.
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 partner:
UN WOMEN, CECI, IME, IES Foundation and SEPMUD
What sector does our partner belong to?
Government (&related)
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
UN Women will help to identify the required evidence for the gap map for women's economic empowerment. CECI is implementing a project for strengthening the ecosystem with a gender-focused approach and is interested in mobilizing the ecosystem to generate greater impact. It is an important institution for scaling up. Women and Entrepreneurship Institute (IME) has conducted research on women's entrepreneurship, and it is expected that it can provide information for the gap map. IES foundation is implementing solutions for women's economic empowerment and is enthusiastic about conductiong experiments to enhace their impact on womew. SEPMUD is the lead governmental organization for de-patriarchalization. (The platform didn't allow me to include the partners separately)
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
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?
Is it enough to promote evidence-based dialogues so that ecosystem institutions can realize that the solutions they propose are not sufficient to address the challenges of women's economic empowerment and seek innovation?
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Explore
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?
The initiative is being collaboratively designed with key ecosystem institutions to generate commitment and promote collective action. It is expected that these institutions, in turn, can encourage the involvement of other ecosystem entities in the collaborative mapping of solutions. Visual tools will be employed to display both gaps and solutions, fostering dialogues with a different focus than the current one, and thus promoting collective action for innovation.
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?
Because ecosystem's mapping solutions represents a significant effort, collective action is essential. Furthermore, in order for the mapping of solutions to be analyzed in comparison with the challenges, it is important to gather evidence on these challenges, which we refer to as gap map.
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 potential growth phase envisions that the Lab can guide ecosystem institutions in experimenting with new solutions in the identified innovation spaces. Our champions would be the IES and CECI Foundations, which are involved in the initiative's design and have economic resources for women's economic empowerment
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5Gender equality
17Partnerships for the goals
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