UNDP Ecuador Accelerator Lab

Working on social protection to look out for the wellbeing of vulnerable populations and on solidarity economy to create fairer ways of production.

The UNDP Ecuador Accelerator Lab is focused on the innovation ecosystem in Ecuador and on creating a space to fail and learn. The Thinkia Innovation Lab – an open innovation space – is a tool that allows our partners to co-create innovation challenges with us on a broad array of topics from chronic child malnutrition to sustainable oceans.

We are also working on social protection and the informal economy. We are running experiments to expand the reach of social protection to youngsters and co-creating with youth to build a platform to promote social security and job opportunities for young informal workers while collecting key data in a register for policy purposes.

We are using crowdsourcing to build an interactive map with formal and informal associative entrepreneurships nationwide. Working in this complex, heterogenous arena will enable us to prototype different forms of interactions, intercooperative networks and to rehearse small-scale pilots co-designed with other associations.

Finally, we are using ethnographic mapping with families of victims of feminicide to collectivize grief, identify injustice and keep memory alive, and using this tool to map Quito's herbal healers' circuits and knowledge as well. Sensemaking helps us produce transformation.