LocationsMeet Nitchakan, UNDP's Youth Engagement and Social Innovation Analyst who empowered Thai youth across Asia and the Pacific Region
July 16, 2024
1.Tell us about yourself: What’s your educational background/professional experience?
My name is Nitchakan Daramatat (Kadae). I currently working as a Youth Engagement and Social Innovation Analyst at UNDP Thailand. I hold a master’s degree in contemplative education, Mahidol University and bachelor’s degree in communication arts (Film), from Bangkok university. My background prior to join UNDP is mainly in youth empowerment and learning design on social innovation process.
2. What made you apply to work with one of the Labs of UNDP Thailand?
In 2017, I managed and international youth programme on SDGs, which we brought youth from around Asia Pacific to learn about SDGs in local context though immersion with local communities. We partnered with UNDP in the programme, it is how I got to connect with UNDP Thailand. As a partner of UNDP on youth engagement, I was invited to join the co-design process of Youth Co:Lab, a regional youth empowerment programme on social innovation and entrepreneurship. At that time, Youth Co:Lab was still in designing process and I really enjoyed to engage in sharing ideas for the design and thought it is an exciting programme for youth in Thailand. Thus, once Thailand was confirmed as one of the pilot counties, I decided to join in UNDP team to run Youth Co:Lab programme.
3. What are your activities or main responsibilities? What is a day at the office like?
I was first join UNDP Thailand under Thailand Social Innovation Platform in UNDP Thailand, the team managing Youth Co:Lab programme. This platform seeks to strengthen the social innovation ecosystem in Thailand to better be able to achieve the SDGs. Thus, My responsibility also covered engaging youth with social innovation ecosystem. At that time, there was no focal point on youth activities in UNDP Thailand office, but we do have several youth activities going on in various areas such as innovation, anti-corruption, biodiversity conservation etc. Later, my role expanded to become the youth focal point of UNDP Thailand. I created the UNDP Thailand Youth Strategy in 2020. My role is to oversee youth portfolio of UNDP Thailand and to support project teams in UNDP to design the engagement with youth in project’s activities. Youth Co:Lab is one of youth programme under youth economic empowerment pillar of UNDP Thailand Youth Strategy. We also have a lot of activities with youth in social innovation areas, as youth is one of the active key players in social innovation ecosystem in Thailand. However, youth engagement is not only limited to youth-focus activities. Intergeneration activities also an important approach to empower youth to collaborate with cross-generation. Thus, my role as youth engagement and social innovation analyst has a lot of interaction with various labs and projects from governance, innovation to environment. It also allows me to work with people various group such as ethnic, people with disabilities, LGBTI etc. I really enjoy working with issues though interaction with our partners and beneficiaries.
4. Tell us about your favorite moment with UNDP Thailand.
My favorite moment is lately when we are working on Local Heroes incubation programme in Maehongson, Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat. Local Heroes incubation programme is a collaboration between Youth Co:Lab and Acc Lab. The programme aims to empower local youth on innovation and entrepreneurship to tackle the challenges in their local area. We can see a lot of education programme in education in schools and a lot of innovation challenges going on in Thailand. However, we can see that most of youth participants are usually come from Bangkok and the big cities. Throughout the experience organizing Youth Co:Lab, we see the gap between youth participants from Bangkok and youth from provincial areas. Thus, in the past 2 years, Youth Co:Lab and Acc Lab are working on localizing local incubation programme. Last year, we have trained local incubators to organize the incubation programme in Maehongson, Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat. The impactful moment was not only through seeing the space that was created for marginalize youth, but also the learning progress that we saw in the local incubators that we trained. The learning is also not only coming from the training, but also ‘learning by doing’ process along the incubation programme. And I strongly believe that the localization is an important approach to leverage social innovation ecosystem in Thailand.
5. Pick one innovation tool (thinking tool) you want to introduce to the public and tell us how it can help design solutions.
I usually enjoy empathy tools. Social Innovation has a lot of tools that we can use for various objectives. My role is a lot of associates with inclusive innovation, which we tried to use innovation tools to engage vulnerable groups to co-design process. One of the tools that I personally like is a ‘journey map’. It is a tool we use when we are trying to investigate the experience of the user. It is not only covering the step of experiences, but the tool also provides a space for us to think about how they think and feel in each moment along the experiences. This is very useful to look at the experience in user perspective. We usually apply this tool to service providers as well. For example, we use policy journey, for government officials to reflects their journey in design policy or deliver public service. I think the highlight of using this tool is not only through the tool, but it is when we have a multi-stakeholders dialogue where we have each stakeholders reflect how they solve the issue though journey map and we compare all journey to find the gap in the issue. Important reminder when using the tool, it is very important for facilitator to facilitate an openness environment where participants can listen whole-heartedly and be aware of their judgement, then the tools will be useful for the dialogue.
6. What piece of advice would you give to those who are considering applying to #JoinALifeChangingMission with UNDP.
UNDP Thailand, we have an ambitious mission to expand our engagement to the furthest behind to work together in world complex issues. Seeing interconnectedness of the issues and be able to work in the integrated approach would be an important foundation of the work in UNDP. Strong management skill would also be another important quality, whether you are the project manager of not. It will be useful as we usually multi-task in one day.
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The Faces of UNDP Thailand is a series to echo the voice of UNDP staff who support UNDP and the community to advance the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Give us 3 words that describe UNDP Thailand: Inclusive, Engage, AmbitiousNitchakan Daramatat
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