Seven international projects selected for funding to experiment with systems innovation approaches for global challenges

Amsterdam, the Netherlands – The Systems Innovation Learning Partnership, from EIT Climate-KIC and Sida, have today announced the seven innovation projects they will be supporting throughout their Experimentation Fund.

The cohort of projects, which come from all over the world and span some of the world’s biggest challenges, will have the opportunity to receive up to 100,000 EUR each to expand their ideas and will be part of a learning community aimed at expanding our knowledge on what works when it comes to systems transformation, advancing knowledge and understanding of systems innovation practices, methodologies, and approaches. Experimenting and learning are core to the Fund, and one of the aims of the learning programme is to bring to life the interplay between testing, experimenting, iterating, and sensemaking and learning, in systems innovation.

The seven awarded projects are:

• Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (Zambia): ‘Enhancing community on-farm seed storage through low-cost improved storage vessels’
• Railway Children India (India):’Transforming the Indian railway network to protect vulnerable children’
• Join for Water (Uganda): ‘Women River Ambassadors (WORIAs) as drivers of change in the Mpanga land-river interface’
• Development Alternatives (India): ‘Safe and green mobility through a network of women-led E-rickshaws’
• Power Compost SAS BIC (Colombia): ‘Transforming the organic waste system in Chía, Colombia’
• NALED (Serbia and the Western Balkans): ‘Citizens voices in urban planning’
• Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (Thailand/Asia-Pacific): ‘Effective co-leadership between persons in a regional refugee rights network’

All seven projects will be part of a community who go through this experimental learning ‘journey’ together. Throughout their project cycle, the cohort will be facilitated by the Systems Innovation Learning Partnership to surface new learning and reflections on their progress and will cultivate iterative learning on three levels: lessons about the individual projects, learning between and within the cohort of projects, and higher-level learning about different approaches, mental models and methodologies for systems change.

Solveig Zophoniasdottir, Head of Learning Services at EIT Climate-KIC, said: “We are honoured by the grantees’ commitment to go on a collective learning journey with us as we aim to understand better how systems innovation can be supported and enabled to flourish. Openness and generosity are at the core purpose of the partnership and we will be openly sharing our process, approach and insights with the aim inspire others who are working to transform systems through innovation”

The selection process for the Experimentation Fund grantees used a Community Grant-Making approach which meant that 14 systems practitioners and researchers from across the world designed and executed the selection process. The team also used a data management tool called Exaptive to allow for a portfolio approach to selection to occur, meaning the cohorts were selected based on how well they might learn together and complement each other.

Nina Strandberg, Policy Specialist on Systems Innovation at Sida and co-lead of the partnership’s steering group, said: “The partnership’s efforts to generate knowledge about how to support system innovation in practice is guided by our aim to shift power to people and organisations working to bring about change in their own communities or societies. We are therefore excited to see this come to life in the experimentation fund as grantees, knowing their own contexts best, will be exploring their own learning questions through experiments and us, as a partnership, learning from their knowledge and insights.”

The Systems Innovation Learning Partnership brings together organisations and people working to tackle big issues to collaborate, experiment, learn, and share ideas that help to activate innovation across whole systems. The activities aim to not only share tools and methods that have had success in creating impact, but to shift mindsets and support people to transform the way we tackle the world’s biggest issues.

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For more information, on the project or to speak to our experts for an interview, please contact media@climate-kic.org