Social Innovation Asia

Sovan Srun and Meas Sak Pheng join the series on social innovation in Cambodia to discuss Edemy, their award-winning social enterprise. The Tesdopi learning app developed by Edemy recently won the Cambodia Total Startupper of the Year award and Sovan Srun won the Top Female Entrepreneur Award.    After returning from the USA where they were Fullbright scholars, they turned to develop Edemy, which has the mission of equalizing “access to quality learning for everyone everywhere." To achieve this mission they combine their expertise in "education and technology to create a holistic learning experience".   They launched Edemy in early 2017 and joined the EPIC Incubation Program by Development Innovations, a USAID funded project. The EPIC Incubation program provided funding, mentoring and business training for Edemy to grow. Since then, they have gone on to create a range of projects that are transforming the experience of education for thousands of young Cambodians. These projects have included

As part of our series on social innovation in Cambodia, we talk to Channé Suy Lan the Managing Director of InSTEDD's Southeast Asia iLab in Phnom Penh. InSTEDD stands for Innovative Support to Emergency Diseases and Disasters. It was founded by Larry Brilliant, who while working with a team to eliminate smallpox in India envisioned how technology could play a vital role in early disease detection and response. In 2006 he presented his vision in a TedTalk, which won the year's TED Prize and he used the prize money to launch InSTEDD. In 2008 they opened InSTEDD’s first iLab in Phnom Penh to spearhead innovations in Southeast Asia with the support of Google.Org and the Rockefeller Foundation.  Channé Suy Lan joined the iLab when it was launched and has since experienced first-hand the evolution in digital technologies. According to Channé, SMS was central to many of the technological solutions they developed in the early years of iLab but now the internet is widespread and also cheaper. However, she emphas

In this episode, we are joined by Thavry Thon for an inspiring talk about education, literature and social change in Cambodia. Thavry is the author of several children books and a Proper Woman. She is also the co-Founder of Seavphovjivet, a publishing house dedicated to supporting Cambodian authors and inspiring young people through literature. Thavry also tours the country speaking to young people about the value of education and taking control of their destiny.    The conversation begins with Thavry discussing the influence of her parents. She explains, “my parents believed in education, and told us it was the ticket to a better life." Other friends would quit school at grade 9 or 8 and go to work at garment factories and earn $80 to $100 per month but Thavry's parents had a different strategy: “They invested in the long term education of their children in the hope that their children would have a better life than they have”. Thavry reflects on the sacrifices her parents made. "People talked abou

Michael Waitze talks to Tara Dermott about how IOM X is using media to support safe migration experiences and stop trafficking and the exploitation of the vulnerable.  Originally from the USA, Tara Dermott moved to Thailand as a Peace Corp volunteer 14 years ago. Stationed in the Northeast of Thailand near the Cambodian border, Tara learned about issues related to migration, leading her to work at IOM X as the program leader.  IOMX is an off-shoot IOM (International Organisation for Migration), which is the UN’s migration agency dedicated to humane and orderly migration, providing services and advice to both governments and migrants. In partnership with USAID, IOM X creates innovative campaigns to encourage safe migration and public action to stop exploitation and human trafficking. One of the problems is, according to Tara, people tend to deny the existence of such migrant exploitation where they live. Its treated as someone else’s problem, so IOM X works to demonstrate what human trafficking an

Just before Pinnapa Satitpatanapan headed to Manila for a position at the Asia Development Bank, Michael Waitze caught up with her to discuss her experience studying at Yale, her passion for impact investing and how it can grow in Thailand.    Pinnapa did a Bachelor of Business Administration at Thammasat Univesity before gaining experience in the investment banking unit of Bangkok Bank and a Thai real estate developer. She then headed to the US to an MBA the Yale School of Management. While her BBA at Thammasat prepared her well, Yale posed new challenges, particularly the dynamic classroom discussions and the mountains of readings for each class. The most valuable lesson she gained at Yale, she says, was on how to prioritize and manage time effectively.  A pivotal experience during her MBA was taking the School of Management's Global Social Entrepreneurship course, which has students team up with mission-driven social enterprises in India. She found herself supporting an enterprise called

To kick off the Social Innovation Asia series on new media in Asia, Michael Waitze and Daniel McFarlane talk to Aung Thura about Myanmar’s rapidly changing mobile media landscape. Aung is the Chief Strategist at Ignite Marketing Communications. With a team of researchers around the country, he is in an ideal position to provide insight into the rapidly changing media landscape.  A pivotal year for Myanmar was 2013 when the telecommunications’ market was liberalised. In the past, SIM cards could cost a staggering $2000-$3000 USD, but after liberalisation of the market, SIM card prices dropped and mobile phone ownership rose. In 2014, Ooredoo from Qatar arrived and their sim cards were a mere $1.50. Soon after, Telenor from Norway joined the market and KDDI of Japan signed a joint venture with MPT (Myanmar Posts and Telecommunication), the incumbent local operator.  According to Aung, the new arrivals faced tough competition as MPT had the majority of the towers and an established audience, while Oo

Michael Waitze and Daniel McFarlane visit FHI 360’s regional Bangkok office to talk with Josh Woodard, who is the organisation’s Regional ICT & Digital Finance Advisor. In an insightful discussion covering many issues, Josh highlights the role of technology in creating resilient communities and the value of thoughtful planning.  Josh’s first experience with Thailand came as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Northeast of Thailand. He explains how it gave him “a sense of the world of international development” and insight into how technology can transform people’s lives. His experience in the Northeast led to a career focus on digital development which he explains as “using digital technology in ways that are appropriate and can effectively help us to achieve development objectives.”  In recent years, Josh has led a grant focused on Technologies for Resilience in Asia-Pacific funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Resilience, according to Josh, is a framing of development that focuses on the “capaci

In this episode of Social Innovation Asia, Michael Waitze talks with Allison Sanders, the Director of Strategy and Partnerships at Baan Dek Foundation about the Foundation’s work supporting the lives of vulnerable migrant children growing up in construction worker campsites in Thailand.  The Baan Dek Foundation was established in 2002 in Chiang Mai by Nicola Crosta, Magali du Parc and Acha Sripaurya. After surveying vulnerable communities around Chiang Mai, they realized many of the most vulnerable in Chiang Mai are the children of migrant workers living at construction campsites around the city. They are at risk of neglect, abuse, exploitation and missing out on basic childhood development needs. In response, they developed a multilingual team that engages in a social work-based approach to supporting children from Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos living at these campsites. A core part of this approach is building a bridge between migrant communities and existing education, health and safety services

 What can a picture of eggs reveal about Indonesian beauty? What can an image of megaphone diplomacy tell you about family relationships? In this episode of the Social Innovation Asia podcast, Michael Waitze and Daniel McFarlane talk with Neil Gains, who is the owner of TapestryWorks and helps clients decode people and culture to help them better connect with the emotions that drive behaviour. He brings a breadth and depth of experience to the conversation after decades of work in research across the world including almost 20 years in Asia. He makes a valuable contribution to the podcast by providing an innovative visual approach to understanding people and the emotional drivers of social and behavioural change.  In a playful conversation, Neil gets Michael to reveal his own motivations and character using pictures. Neil explains how visual approaches help reveal unconscious motivations by tapping into our brain’s powerful visual memory. They discuss how familiarity and recognition give a simpler

'Inspirational' is a good way to describe Rithy Thul but it also captures what he wants Koompi to be for young Cambodians. Koompi is Cambodia's first locally designed laptop and Rithy Thul's latest venture. He discusses it, his company Smallworld Cambodia and his dream for education in Cambodia with Michael Waitze on Social Innovation Asia's first podcast on innovation in Cambodia.    Smallworld Cambodia. started as a coworking space but soon became a platform for start-up ventures in Cambodia by providing office space, mentorship and capital in some cases. Smallworld Cambodia also engages in internal projects and for these Rithy follows a simple principle. If it is meaningful but people think is it too difficult, then Smallworld will try it.  Its this principle that led him and his team to develop Koompi and their pursuit of changing how laptops are designed. Rather than hardware being designed for the latest software and dropping off in performance as the software is updated, Rithy believes

In the 3rd Social Innovation Asia podcast, Michael Waitze and Daniel McFarlane are fortunate to converse with Stéphane Rousseau, who is the Director of International Field Immersion Courses at the School of Global Studies at Thammasat University. He brings an enormous wealth of experience to the conversation after decades of humanitarian, human rights, and civil society work across Asia and the Pacific. Over the years, his work has presented many ethical and moral challenges. It is not the uplifting work many people think it is, Stéphane suggests. The people you could not help or the people left behind are the ones that stay in your memory. Without referencing social innovation specifically, Stéphane provides multiple examples of how people and organisations have subverted structures of power and created innovative approaches to address pressing social problems. Listening to Stéphane, it is evident social innovation is nothing new. It just has a new label and a fresh look. Stéphane discusses how in the ear

 The second episode of the Social Innovation Asia podcast is an energizing lunchtime conversation between Courtney Savie Lawrence and Michael Waitze.  Courtney, originally from Nashville, Tennessee, arrived in Asia seven years ago with the perspective "the world is so much bigger than our own bubble.”  After co-founding a social enterprise in the US, she was recruited to develop a Global Studies program at a university in Hiroshima. After a few years in Japan, Courtney followed her now-husband to Bangkok, where she facilities workshops and training on design thinking and social innovation. She describes Bangkok as one of her favorite places and "a dynamic city of innovation and change in the region." For Courtney, social innovation is about "thinking really creatively in fresh ways that are going to be disruptive in terms of changing the status quo and meeting the global challenges that are unprecedented." To Courtney, it is much more than a step-by-step process. It should be seen as shifting

In the first episode of the Social Innovation Asia podcast series, Dipendra KC talks with Michael Waitze about his experience founding and running a youth organisation in Nepal, and his role in a new masters degree program of Social Innovation and Sustainability at Thammasat University.  When Dipendra and his friends were seeking work experience as young college students, they kept being asked if they had any experience. In response, they went about building an organisation to give themselves the experience they were missing. They called Yuwa, which simply means youth in Nepali and has the objective of giving young like-minded Nepalese a chance to explore and test their ideas for social change.  It began as an organisation of five unpaid young students with no external capital and became an organisation with 10 full-time staff, 100 active members, funding of four to five hundred thousand US dollars per year while reaching out to 5,000 young Nepalese around the county on an annual basis.  Thr