d.shop: design thinking + social innovation workshop is a workshop (duh!) on Mar 13th that puts you through a design thinking problem-solving framework, giving you the means to create innovative solutions to social problems.

The workshop will take you through the whole design process on a social issue (specifically, Animal Welfare) — and conclude with a pitching session to the NGO, who will provide feedback, and if you really impress them, might even provide institutional support to bring your idea to life!

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is a multidisciplinary problem-solving approach founded on problem definition, empathetic understanding, ideating, prototyping, selecting, implementing and learning.

It asks the fundamental questions to the problem, to devise solutions that aren’t just related to a symptom of the problem (e.g. high drop out rates), but which target the root cause (e.g. teacher burnout). As Henry Ford once said, before the car was invented, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses’.”

Event Details

Date: Saturday, 13 Mar 2010

Time: 9am - 6pm

Venue: Singapore Civil Service College

d.shop's secret motive is to prepare a batch of potential faciliators for Syinconnect - a bigger (~120 people!), better full fledged design+social innovation conference in early July this year!

By applying for d.shop, you're not signing up to be a facilitator per se, but preference will be given to people who indicate an intention to in the signup form.

Sounds exciting? Then sign up!
*Please note that participation is FREE, but selective!

Other ways to get involved:
- Interested in joining the Syinconnect organising team? Email johnson@syinc.org
- Want to attend the conference and/or receive updates? 
Join our conference mailing list

From Left to Right, here's Sharon, Nive, Bernise, and Deliang. Aww, sorry Alvin!!

Anyway. Having seen many exciting things, supported the International Youth Climate Movement, and gained a better understanding to international negotiations at the UNFCCC, as well as put some thought into the consequences of COP15 for Singapore (Whew, long sentence!), the team is excited to share its insights, particularly with youth. We've learnt so much!

So if you are an educator, or representative of any group whom you think would like to hear more about our Reflections on COP15 and on climate change and Singapore, just send us an email at cop15@syinc.org.

We are looking to engage youth audiences with a dynamic and interesting presentation, and we are definitely open to adapting our content to suit the context of the particular occasion. It'll be cool :)

Finally, the bottom line is- get in touch with us now! Following the hype from Copenhagen, there's no better time than the present to jump in on the momentum and spread awareness about climate change. So why wait?

This was part of our collaborative project with Rotary and Volans, known as the Rotary Youth Social Entrepreneurship Challenge (or RYSEC). RYSEC is a business plan competition (social, of course), and the whole idea of this workshop was to prep potential applicants who were thinking of submitting - but who could use some workshopping on business plan basics. 

For the uninitiated, more on RYSEC here.

A big thank you to our amazing speakers - Elim Chew, Kevin Teo, Sarah Mavrinac, Jack Sim, Steven Lam, Kenny Low. We even had a special spot with Thian from Bloomerang. It seems almost cliche to say, but these guys were really engaging - and dare we say, inspirational.

Special thanks to CHEC our kind venue sponsor - thank you Kenny!

Finally, to our participants, go put the workshop to good use: we are anticipating the great ideas you all talked about - in the form of a business plan! Submissions close Aug 24 so, fasterly ok.

All the best!!

Schools/institutions: If you are interested in having us speak (or run a workshop) at your school, drop us a note at  speaking@syinc.org  with the usual details and any course objectives/requirements we should take note of (if any). We don't (yet) charge for our talks, but you are more than welcome to offer a (optional) donation!

We've got a small team here: Darren from NYP who's in NS, Kevin from ACS I who's also in NS, Cuilin from Columbia Uni, and me (Bernise). A shoutout to Shaun who was meant to join us too, but (quite unfortunately) got quick sick and is in hospital - get well soon!

You can follow the action through our blog: www.syinc.org/blog

Feel free to get in touch! contactus [at] syinc.org