Disclaimer:
Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed.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.
Women Creative Labs
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.
BIG BET
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
The creative and cultural sector can serve as a powerful means of advocacy, empowerment, and social inclusion, especially for marginalized and vulnerable communities. Several studies have shown that an arts education has a positive effect on the self-esteem of at-risk youth and enhances their resilience. It also enables those struggling with mental health and social issues to build relationships and engage positively with others in their communities. Despite high potential, feasibility and applicability of creative economy’s means toward solving most pressing social issues and driving social transformation, there is no dedicated program in Kyrgyzstan to capacitate local non-profit and civic organizations in using them.
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?
The Women Creative Lab (WCL), our experimental project was launched in 2022. The WCL is a women-oriented coworking space that provides residents with access to unique training and mentoring support programmes, as well as seed funding to test or accelerate their business ideas in creative industries. The WCL "Akylzhan" in Osh was the first of its kind, and over 100 women and girls shared their aspirations, dreams, and plans during its first year of operation. WCL is a woman oriented coworking space with extremely enabling and nurturing peer environment. The Lab residents have access to unique training and mentoring support programs as well as to the seed funding sources to test or accelerate their business ideas in creative industries. Due to the successful experiment with WCL in Osh, in 2023 UNDP in collaboration with the grassroot organizations is scaling up the WCL network to Batken and Jalal-Abad regions covering more than 200 rural women to discover their talents, support in finding jobs and create opportunities to generate sustainable income using creative skills. The WCL case allowed UNDP both to unveil the lack of knowledge and low capacity of local NGOs to customize and implement projects using creative economy’s means and recognize high impact they can produce on social transformation engaging most vulnerable.
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.
40% of the
employed in creative industries are women; most of them are employed informally
69% of woman respondents would like to
have a job in creative industries as freelancers or be employed by creative
businesses
24% of the respondents consider “absence
of a family support” one of the key barriers toward entering creative economy
Every second woman indicates “lack of
financial support” as the key factor hampering them from the development of
creative skills
59% of women stated that launch of
secure creative spaces to meet, share ideas, support each other and exchange
experience is the key institutional measure which can be implemented to foster
their engagement
Creative professions allow women to
combine work and housekeeping while building financial independence and
improving status in the family.
Source: UNDP’s research study to identify skills and knowledge gaps among youth as well as other factors
hindering empowerment through the creative economy - 2023
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.
Creative Economy, Online Whiteboard for Visual Collaboration (miro.com)
public - creative economy, Visual Workspace for Innovation (miro.com)
Situation analysis on creative economy
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12_H7qK69qCF7sQTph15A7rBlKuWUVc4r/edit
Academic articles:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uVqpr4rk-5s0y4ijfRA5C3epkkX__7JC?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1x4JnlDX0cNjDZfJPOUKvTC_0odmtcd63?usp=drive_link
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?
Women Creative Lab is first in Kyrgyzstan gender-sensitive co-working space and innovative paradigm to empower women especially in rural areas. Conventionally, women empowerment is mainstreamed through their engagement into more traditional economic sectors; while creative industries allow to engage into the network women who might have never been employed but still be equipped with handicraft skills, for example.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
Searching for the customized solutions based on the Women Creative Lab paradigm to empower rural women with soft and hard skills to improve their lives and drive positive changes at a community level.
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:
"Women Peace Bank" Public Foundation
What sector does our partner belong to?
Civil Society
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
implementation partner
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
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:
Local Administrations of the relevant territories
What sector does our partner belong to?
Government (&related)
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
support in engaging women into local community development, providing facility to launch co-working spaces
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
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:
Tourist Destination "South Shore of Issyk-Kul"
What sector does our partner belong to?
Civil Society
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
sharing knowledge and experience in development and promotion of the tourist destination
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?
How to better engage women, especially rural and most vulnerable, into activities aimed at empowering with relevant knowledge and skills? What conditions to be ensured to reach best effect at a personal and community levels? What could be the driving forces for collaboration and joint initiatives?
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Grow
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?
Co-creation and human-centered design are applied starting from the design of the Lab (both physical and content-wise) up to exploring potential models for sustainability and growth.
Positive deviants - are those residents of the Labs who are becoming role models for other participants and communities in general
Ethnography is helping to customize the paradigm considering local context, feature of the territories and already successful grassroot solutions.
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?
- Understanding of the local mentality to better fit proposed paradigm into the local context.
- Key features of the territory (village, city) to understand the potential of the Lab to drive community-level change
- The use of creative economy means for women empowerment globally - experience of other developing countries
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?
UNDP team - using this successfully tested model integrating into development proposals
Ministry of Labour, Social Protection and Migration - highlighting this approach as an innovative solution toward women empowerment
Local NGOs are learning from this experience and accommodate relevant approaches into their activities
END OF ACTION LEARNING PLAN: Thank you! The form saves automatically and your submission has been recorded. You may now exit this window.
5Gender equality
8Decent work and economic growth
11Sustainable cities and communities
Comments
Log in to add a comment or reply.