Tashkent, 8-12 April 2013 – some twenty semi-finalists of the Mini-Grants Programme of the UNDP “Social Innovations and Volunteerism” Project are undergoing special Project Development and Management Training organized with the financial support of UNFPA in Uzbekistan.
UNFPA and UNDP united their efforts, in partnership with Youth Initiatives Center “Kelajak Ovozi” to support the socially important mini projects designed and led by the young people to address their problems and find innovative solutions to the obstacles they face in their daily lives. Both UN agencies are contributing to the youth-led innovative projects’ development because those young people are the agents of the development process and they will become future leaders for their communities.
Social innovation is becoming an increasingly popular concept around the world. It stands for the development of new solutions for existing social needs with the help of creative thinking and questioning conventional roles, links and relationships between the existing systems and the related stakeholders and elements in the society. Social innovation projects in countries such as Armenia or Kazakhstan, for example, have developed websites for helping people with disabilities to find employment, or to help them gather data about health topics with text messaging technology and share the information with Ministry of Health.
With the aim of further supporting the social innovation projects selected upon completion of the training, UNDP/ UNV Project in collaboration with the Center of Youth Initiatives “Kelajak Ovozi” intend to provide mini-grants of $ 3 million UZS for the implementation of plans set out in the mini-projects. Since this initiative will also continue next year, it is going to provide the Uzbek youth, as well as other stakeholders with other possibilities to develop their social innovation projects through participation in the similar training and the mini-grants programme.
