Fast, competent and geared to business needs: Eager to assist local businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, the business development agency (WFG) for the district of Unna has devised a wide range of services.
Category: Fostering innovation
Interview with Harinjaka Ratozamanana: Innovation Ecosystems
In our Grand Season Finale, Harinjaka from Anatananarivo, Madagascar, tells us how the wisdom of his ancestors made sense during this pandemic.
More: https://youtu.be/7zJOBM0I6pw
Join us and watch a special series of videos and podcasts that will show how to overcome a crisis from many different points of view. More videos, podcasts and interviews on our COVID-19 page.
Interview with Faola Hodaj on Innovation Ecosystems
Learn through Faola Hodaj, Director of Innovation at Municipality of Tirana, how did the municipality reflect this innovative spirit through its services and response to the pandemic.
More: https://youtu.be/BpnLZLcky00
Join us and watch a special series of videos and podcasts that will show how to overcome a crisis from many different points of view. More videos, podcasts and interviews on our COVID-19 page.
Interview with Leila Ben Gacem: Social Innovation
Beni Khalled, Tunisia, a city famous for its citrus farms, is home of Leila Ben Gacem, social entrepreneur and as elected city councillor head of the Finance Committee. The brave woman worked late hours throughout the first lockdown in order to coordinate volunteers, health companies and municipal activities through social entrepreneurship skills.
More: https://youtu.be/w4ihfI_Gg00
Join us and watch a special series of videos and podcasts that will show how to overcome a crisis from many different points of view. More videos, podcasts and interviews coming soon on our COVID-19 page.
Podcast with Armin Berger: Digital Innovation
Welcome to Berlin, where thousands of artists lost their stages because of lockdown. Learn how Armin Berger got support from the senator of culture and how good ideas emerged during breakfast to fill Berlin with new life: Berlin(a)Live
More: https://youtu.be/UwqjbiMlIGE
Join us and watch a special series of videos and podcasts that will show how to overcome a crisis from many different points of view. More videos, podcasts and interviews coming soon on our COVID-19 page.
Kiel: Entrepreneurship and Digitalisation
We traveled to Kiel, where we captured deep insights from a city that, as a digital champion, had to adapt quickly. How do you keep your StartUp community alive if people cannot meet personally?
More: https://youtu.be/-QxhW-Gx-3M
Join us and watch a special series of videos and podcasts that will show how to overcome a crisis from many different points of view. More videos, podcasts and interviews coming soon on our COVID-19 page.
Final Report: Virtual Global Exchange
The exchange was designed to bring together urban practitioners from all over the globe. The goal was to ignite creativity, innovation, solidarity and motivation, while creating and enhancing this global community of practice around the common purpose of combating the global COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences with smart local solutions and strategies.
During the first week, urban practitioners and experts from different municipalities, the civil society, business and academia, presented a total of 56 Good Practices in 18 sessions and gave insights into their experienced challenges and local solutions to deal with the pandemic. The exchange were centered around the nine topics were Public Health, Crisis Management, Economic Response, Housing, Education, Digitalisation, Crisis Communication, Innovation, and Green Urban Recovery.
The second week was about receiving practical “How To” capsules with practical exercises on topics that came up repeatedly during the exchange events such as: social media usage, digital tools, and how to plan for virtual meetings. Finally, the newly learned mindsets and tools could be applied in a 4-hour solution design workshop.
Local Economic Development and Job Creation in MENA
Local Economic Development (LED) remains a top priority for the MENA countries as a driver for economic stability and job creation for a region with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. While many resources are invested in fostering local economic development in the MENA countries led by governments, however, there is often a lack of systematic access to practice-oriented solutions.
More than 40 local urban practitioners from 22 municipalities and 10 countries from the MENA region and Germany took part of the virtual dialogue event organized by the Connective Cities project. The dialogue event consisted of five virtual sessions held between the Sep 29th – Oct 7th 2019, focusing on facilitating the exchange of know-how and experiences through peer-to-peer learning among municipal representatives and urban practitioners. Moreover, the dialogue event aimed at enriching the analysis and planning capacity of the participating municipal representatives to address existing challenges of implementing LED and job creation programs.
Throughout the Dialogue event, participants showed tremendous commitment to the program with a level of excitement that remained high till the last day of the dialogue where they learned how to present their LED project concepts in less than 3 minutes; an activity that reflected their understanding of project development process as well as the peer-to-peer exchange methodology.
This report reflects in detail the main results of the virtual dialogue event.
Local Economic Development and Job Creation in the Middle East and North Africa
More than 40 local urban practitioners from 22 municipalities and 10 countries from the MENA region and Germany took part of the virtual dialogue event organized by the Connective Cities project. The dialogue event consisted of five virtual sessions held between the Sep 29th – Oct 7th focusing on facilitating the exchange of know-how and experiences through peer-to-peer learning among municipal representatives and urban practitioners. Moreover, the dialogue event aimed at enriching the analysis and planning capacity of the participating municipal representatives to address existing challenges of implementing LED and job creation programs. The discussion also led to identifying the gaps in resources and the support needed to implement future LED projects.
Local economic development (LED) remains a top priority for cities in MENA and a driver for economic stability and job creation for a region with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. A wide spectrum of stakeholders are engaged in fostering LED including governments, NGOs, the private sector, and development actors. Nevertheless, there remains the need to intensify exchange of practice-oriented experience and good practice among municipal representatives and urban practitioners on related topics such as strategizing for LED and creating partnerships with the private sector, sustainable livelihood programs and decent job creation, as well as green economic transformation.
The facilitation approach focused on designing, planning, and conducting a series of virtual knowledge-exchange activities in which several steps were taken:
- Clustering: of partners according to their regional distribution, municipal needs, and vision for future development for their cities;
- Defining: the subtopics for dialogue that are in harmony with their current ambitions and future objectives;
- Inviting: partners to virtual dialogue sessions after outlining the goal of this dialogue and defining roles and responsibilities agreed upon by all partners, as well as the anticipated outcome;
- Facilitating: the virtual exchange sessions in a manner that will ensure maximum interaction and knowledge exchange;
- Evaluation and Follow up: with all partners after all sessions are completed to share the outputs of the dialogue to maintain ongoing knowledge exchange for future collaboration in between the different municipalities;
- Reporting: on all conducted activities and the overall summary of the dialogue.
The project has built a Network, an exchange platform for municipal representatives and urban practitioners, which provides a systematic access to practice-oriented solutions for sustainable urban development by facilitating change and providing mutual support.
Dialogue event introductory video: English version | Arabic version
The role of innovation in curbing the impacts of the pandemic
More than 15 municipal representatives from around 15 cities in MENA and sub-Sharan Africa participated in the virtual event of the knowledge-exchange series on Municipal Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, which took place on the 14th October 2020.
Municipal representatives from both political and technical levels were invited and they engaged in knowledge-exchange to analyse and discuss practical examples on how innovation contributes to curbing the impacts of the pandemic.
Program
As part of the virtual event, four good practices from Aachen (Germany), Biskra and Batna (Algeria), and Mosul (Iraq) were showcased. The virtual event aimed at facilitating the sharing of experiences of interventions undertaken from a production, innovation, and scientific point of view to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on cities in MENA and Germany.
Moreover, the following set of questions were addressed:
- How did the local actors implement innovative initiatives to curb the impacts of the pandemic?
- What have been the core challenges in developing the innovative solutions?
- How can partnerships initiate strategic and operational response to the short-term challenges resulting from Covid-19, as well as the long-term planning recovery?
- What are the lessons learned from the perspective of local and national entities, research institutions and the private sector in developing these initiatives?
Presentations
Fight Corona.AC initiative in RWTH Aachen university, Germany
Prof. Jan Borchers, RWTH Aachen university, Germany
English Arabic
COV-Fight Project in Biskra, Algeria
Mr. Imad Tibermacine, Biskra, Algeria
English Arabic
3D printing technology for the production of medical supplies in Batnah, Algeria
Mr. Belcasem Islam, Batnah, Algeria
English Arabic
Mosul Space in Mosul, Iraq
Ms. Susan Long, Innovation Lead for Middle East at Field Ready
Mr. Salih Mahmod, Mosul Space
English Arabic
Results
The showcasing of good practices resulted in an opportunity for cooperation between the innovation hub in Mosul, Iraq and Algerian good practices. Connective Cities will facilitate this cooperation.