IDIN local chapters in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ghana, India, Uganda, and Peru have been awarded small grants to host events, trainings, and workshops that will fuel the growth of their local innovation ecosystems over the next six months.

IDIN local chapters are groups of IDIN Network members around the globe who organize to support local innovation initiatives and each other’s projects year-round. To date, more than 10 local chapters have been established—each one focused on co-creation, design, and development activities adapted for its local context.

In Cali, Colombia, an IDIN local chapter grant will support a two-day workshop with a group of IDIN Network members and local recyclers to develop small scale models of recyclers’ carts used for moving waste collected by the recycler throughout the city. At the close of the workshop, the most promising prototype will be selected to be built at scale and presented to DAGMA, the local administrative department for environmental management, which is interested in mass producing carts for local recyclers. 

In San Jose, Costa Rica, IDIN Network members will organize CRINO: ¡innovemos con basura!, a series of bi-monthly collaborative workshops on reducing and recycling trash to innovate. The IDIN Costa Rica chapter aims to create a space for groups that make up the vibrant, growing innovation ecosystem of Costa Rica to converge and share ideas through dialogue panels, fabrication sessions, and community visits.

In New Longoro, Ghana, IDIN Network members will organize a Creative Capacity Building training in partnership with local community members to prototype different kinds of groundnut planters just before the groundnut planting season.

In Chennai, India, IDIN Network members at BS Abdur Rahman University will use their grant to launch a local chapter, introducing concepts of social innovation, co-creation, and design for development to university students through a series of workshops and awareness raising events.

In Lima, Peru, a growing local chapter will host three themed workshops to share and build solutions focused on local challenges. One workshop will discuss the use of information communications technology for rural development. The second workshop will explore technologies used at the local level to address financial literacy, and the final workshop will focus on experimental science education for low-income schools. 

In Kampala, Uganda, the existing local chapter will build upon momentum from IDDS Cookstoves to bring together a new, expanded chapter in Kampala. Ten members from the existing chapter will travel to Kampala to attend the end of the design summit, where they will take part in the final project presentations, the closing ceremony. They will also organize a panel in which they introduce new members of the Network to the various ways that they can get involved with IDIN.