Social Innovation Salons
When I first learnt from Carol (my PennSEM mentor) that one of my responsibilities this summer will be to host Ventures in Development’s salons, I was a bit confused. Firstly, I don’t possess any hair-cutting skills; secondly, I thought ViD only deals with yak fur, not human hair?
The official definition of ‘social innovation salon’ from ViD’s webpage is “a monthly after-work cocktail event that will stimulate a cross-disciplinary audience to generate innovative ideas that address particular social issues”. Even though I was momentarily relieved to learn that there will be no hair-cutting involved in this event, I still couldn’t quite grasp the idea until I coordinated a salon in Hong Kong last month.
To make things simple, a social innovation salon is basically a discussion group that runs in a creative format. In my opinion there are 3 points that make our salon stands out from normal discussion groups:
1. Cross-disciplinary audience: The more diverse, the better! Participants who are non-experts in the area of discussion are most welcome so that more unconventional ideas can be brainstormed.
2. Quick brainstorm and pitch format: Instead of a laundry list of solutions or a long-winded elaboration with pros and cons, we ask our participants to throw out quick and focused ideas so as to get the creative juices flowing freely.
3. Incremental follow-up: The salon is just a start. We want to put the ideas generated into action and scale it up to a feasible project step by step. The detail flow is as follows:
Every month, ViD will select a discussion topic that is of social interest, yet, hasn’t received enough attention from the society to make significant progress. Since the salon is held monthly in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei, we will discuss a social problem that is general to these 3 places. Previous discussion topics spans from migrant workers to elderly care. As for our salons in July, we decided to explore ways to help marginalized children in the region.
The difficulties encountered by marginalized children often relate to education and integration into the local community. As the old saying goes, “the youngsters today are the leaders of tomorrow”, the importance of cultivating marginalized children cannot be neglected. In the case of Hong Kong, there are 2 groups of children that can be classified as ‘marginalized children’—the ‘new immigrant children’ who came to Hong Kong from the mainland China, and the ‘ethnic-minority children’, generally referring to South Asian children (e.g. Pakistani, Nepalese, Indians) who resided in Hong Kong when their parents come here to work. We decided to focus on the latter group due to a less portion of resources allocated to helping them and more barriers that they have to face. The details of this salon, including creative solutions pitched by the participants can be read from our typepad blog.
Through taking part in this salon, I better understood not just the problems faced by the ethnic-minority children, but also the process of social innovation. Start small, but think big! Even the most seemingly-outrageous idea can be the start of a feasible model if enough follow-up steps are taken. I’m now on my way to prepare this month’s salon and am truly excited at the thought that my little contribution might have stimulated the growth of a social enterprise that solves a particular social problem in my hometown!
- Vicky
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