About IDEAS
Founded in 2008, IDEAS is a specialized and professional international camp education institution. IDEAS is dedicated to provide high-quality camp education programs and activities for teenagers aging from 4 to 18 years old, with the aim to help youth to develop learning abilities, living, and survival skills as required in the 21st century. Based on the objective of improving the cross-cultural communications among teenagers through camp education, thus, making them world citizens with global outlook, IDEAS started China’s very first camp education research center and cooperates with camps from 27 countries all over the globe.
About IDEAS’s partnership with PIM
The partnership began in 2018 when IDEAS approached PIM with the goal of incorporating workshops on social innovation and social entrepreneurship in their summer curriculum. IDEAS has traditionally designed and organized experiential learning camps for youths and were interested in incorporating skill-building workshops and innovation curriculum to support students with developing their own community project. IDEAS also hoped to expose their participants to innovation tools and frameworks with cross-sector applications such as social investment, crowdfunding, entrepreneurship, design thinking and more. In 2020, PIM worked with IDEAS to develop the learning objectives and adapt a hands-on social entrepreneurship course to an online format.
Objectives
IDEAS Youth Summit is a 2-to-5-day workshop designed for middle and high school students to gain exposure to social impact business models and social entrepreneurships. Working closely with our client, PIM identified the following three key program objectives. Participants learn social innovation and human- centered design through games and simulations, while exploring inspiring examples of social entrepreneurship. Together in teams, participants practice applying business model and technology solutions to develop a venture idea addressing a problem in their local community.
Approach
Collaborating with our client, PIM designed a series of gamified activities based on concepts particular to the social entrepreneurship realm and case studies based on exceptional player in the market, which includes a 90-min introductory workshop “Impact Monopoly” to explain the idea of social entrepreneurship and impact business models, followed by a 2-day (12 hours) “deep-dive” workshop on social entrepreneurship.
“Impact Monopoly”
During this 90-min workshop, participants simulate the process a social entrepreneur uses to solve seemingly intractable social problems. In a fast-paced card game, participants challenge each other to apply human-centered design principles while mixing-and-matching business models, tech innovations and impact outcomes in order to create social enterprise ideas that advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“Deep Dive into Social Entrepreneurship”
Participants will learn how to create a social enterprise and practice core skills for social entrepreneurship by segmenting a market, prototyping an idea, tackling operational realities and considering strategies for scale for a social enterprise. By exploring case studies, establishing financial plans, and developing their own webpage for a social business idea, participants will make connections for how business can be used to advance progress to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Results
Post-program evaluation surveys reinforced that this program provided student participants with an active and experiential learning experience, integrating theoretical concept on social enterprise business models with practical project design components while advancing understanding through effective case studies.
90% reported the program expanded their understanding of social entrepreneurship and being a social entrepreneur;
90% would recommend the program to a friend, most citing their reason being that they’ve learned how to take the first step to start a social enterprise or be a social entrepreneur through the program;
100% described “social entrepreneurship” as a viable and sustainable solution to tackle social issues.
#social innovation #social entrepreneurship #changemaker
