UNDP, HATCH! Ventures announce youth innovation for development partnership

The partnership was announced with the signing of a memorandum of understanding in Ha Noi on 14 June 2016. Dr Pratibha Mehta, UNDP Resident Representative in Viet Nam, signed the partnership agreement with Mr Pham Quoc Dat, Director of HATCH! VENTURES.

The collaboration will focus on three game changing areas of common interest: innovation for development; mobilization of young people into innovative action towards achieving the SDGs; and partnership with private sector.

Viet Nam has made remarkable economic and social progress in the past three decades. The national poverty rate has declined from 58% of the population in 1993 to just 7% today.  While the economy slowed somewhat after the global downturn, the country is now experience GDP growth rates of approaching 7%. However, this progress has been hampered by, persistent disparities (notably by ethnicity and locality), environmentally unsustainable production and consumption and the ongoing threat of climate change. Meanwhile, people’s expectations for improved services and living conditions have risen dramatically as they become better-educated.

“Young people are the most important stakeholder to drive the sustainable development agenda forward,” said Dr Pratibha Mehta at the signing ceremony. “Through this partnership, we shall bring innovative technology and development agenda closer and encourage new ideas, prototype and creative solutions that increase access, reduce cost, and enable citizen participation and feedback”.

This agreement builds on the initial partnership in 2015 around the Hackathon for Social Good, which mobilized more than 100 young people into action toward delivering the sustainable development goals. This competition resulted in two innovative ideas to promote citizen voices, namely “For People” (the 4P) application on mobile phones to collect citizen feedback on public services and “GT-101” – an educational tool to encourage citizens to report on any misconduct by traffic police.

In 2016, UNDP will collaborate with HATCH! VENTURES on the Social Innovation Camp and the Social Innovation Summit to identify and scale up innovation for development solutions.  UNDP will challenge the campers to come up with innovative solutions to tackle issues under 5 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely SDG12- Responsible Consumption and Production; SDG13- Climate Action; SDG14- Life below water; SDG15- Life on land; and SDG16- Peace and Justice.

“What 2016 Social Innovation Camp is different from the previous competition is that it will stimulate sustainable innovative solutions for social issues, that can be scaled up to make a difference across the country,” said Pham Quoc Dat. He said that the Camp would take place in August in three cities - Ha Noi, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City - to facilitate participation nationwide.

“I hope that 2016 cooperation will yield even more innovative ideas and galvanize 1,000 of young people into creativity to speed up information sharing and promote citizens’ participation and transparency for SDGs implementations,” said Dr Pratibha Mehta.