Impact Week gUG
Organization Details
Our 7-day Design Thinking workshops harness the power of Design Thinking to unleash the power of innovation and entrepreneurship for positive change, inspire youth to solve societal problems in innovative manners, and train local multipliers as Design Thinking Coaches. In the three-day workshop, we pass our knowledge about the human-centered innovation method Design Thinking to local NGOs, incubator members, faculty staff of local universities, as well as employees of international companies. After this, we organize a four-day Design Thinking Challenge, where the newly trained coaches apply their knowledge directly by coaching a team of young people between 17 and 25 while they develop solutions for local problems. During this event, we bring together a broad range of actors all interested in social innovation and finding creative solutions for a better world. As such, we unite different nationalities and backgrounds, academia, and corporations.
Impact Story
In 2015, Michael Huebl discovered a critical gap: many Kenyans are forced to launch businesses due to the economic situation to secure their income but lack the necessary strategic knowledge or helpful tools to do so, leading to high failure rates. Michael, being an entrepreneur himself, wanted to solve this problem with an adequate training concept. Together with his wife, who was experienced in Design Thinking at SAP, and other entrepreneurs and innovators, they envisioned a program to empower youth globally to address community challenges innovatively. The first "Impact Week" was launched shortly thereafter, assembling 20 experts to collaborate with local students and teachers in Kenya. The program's success led to the will to continue which made it necessary to ensure sustainability. This led to the integration of a "Train-the-Coach" workshop, enhancing local capacity to independently run similar workshops, multiplying the initiative's impact, and enabling financial stability through the training of international corporates.
Ever since, the project expanded beyond Kenya in 2017, now reaching 44 Impact Weeks in 15 countries worldwide. Each location tailors the initiative to local needs while maintaining the core goal of empowering locals to develop sustainable, community-driven business solutions. So far, we have been able to train about 800 local and 500 international Junior Design Thinking Coaches, had over 4100 participants in our Impact Week Challenge, and were able to facilitate the development of around 700 ideas for social businesses. The Kenyan teams trained in earlier sessions successfully conducted independent Impact Weeks by 2017, marking a significant milestone in local empowerment. Impact Week has thus evolved into a global movement, fostering not just innovation and entrepreneurship but also cross-cultural connections and community growth.
