UNDP Colombia Accelerator Lab

From left behind hotspots to hotbeds of development, UNDP Colombia's Accelerator Lab addresses the last-mile gap.

Since 2019, we have explored, mapped solutions and experimented with the last-mile gap, the most expensive and complex gap to close for organizations and governments because of the difficulties in reaching beneficiaries or citizens. Left-behind communities are hotspots located at the far end of the public value chain, separated by the last mile. We aim to support these hotspots to become hotbeds of their own development.

We work with our Country Office and strategic partners to foster empathy as we tackle these development gaps.We approach our challenge and the territories with a systemic perspective, seeking to overcome the individual projects' logic towards the design of portfolios that allow us to identify multiple entry points to generate systemic transformation and test out new ways of regional development in Colombia. We have also fostered the use of new technologies (drones, 360-degree cameras, immersive technology, digital IDs) as enablers that allow us to activate empathy and reduce the physical and mental gaps between different groups such as indigenous groups, migrants, informal Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), among others.

Finally, we have been mapping solutions and tapping into the collective intelligence of Colombians themselves, to reach bottom-up solutions in a more agile way to accelerate development.