SDGzine special edition 07 - Open Geneva

I first believed in and embraced the mission of Open Geneva as a participant, experiencing hackathons as an educational practice during my Master’s academic degree studies. Now, as the Vice-President of Open Geneva and Partnerships Coordinator at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), I contribute to the democratization and standardization of open innovation into global educational settings. The Geneva Trialogue, the event that launches the annual Open Geneva Festival in 2021, is one of the pathways towards implementing this mission.

From Knowledge and the SDGs in 2016, right after the adoption of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, the Geneva Trialogue is moving and transforming along with the needs for progress over the SDGs. Scaling Education for the SDGs, introducing Open Innovation for the SDGs, and Scaling the Open Innovation education and practice, have guided the Geneva Trialogue to establish since 2021 its DNA, under the theme “Open Innovation for Education”, capitalizing on the need of all actors, from academia, international organizations, and the private sector, to seek new collaborations to build and accelerate innovative solutions through education and learning approaches leading to sustainability. This is why in 2022, the Geneva Trialogue, responding to these needs, transformed into an actionable event using cross-cutting methods to best support the sustainability challenges brought by lead institutions and invited partners, through a triple phase process of Discovery, Design, as well as Innovation Implementation through the hackathons.

Within the past two years, Open Geneva has remarkably managed to empower over 3000 individuals and sustainable development stakeholders and practitioners around the world, with focus in Geneva, and Asia-Pacific, through the education and practice of hackathons to address SDGs challenges. Since its creation, it has exponentially grown the open innovation community in Geneva, while its mission to democratize open innovation, is further reinforced by the use of digital technologies, and is scoped towards being in service of more localized and regional sustainable development. With global multiple crises emerging, we need to invest in new education, and novel learning approaches that will enable collective intelligence and will empower individuals and communities to learn through innovating and to be active contributors to progress acceleration.

Afroditi Anastasaki

PARTNERSHIPS, OFFICE OF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNITAR

Equipe du Geneva Trialogue 2022