Domain: Enhancing the quality of innovation and entrepreneurial education
Action: Training young people to become transformative change agents contributing to systems transformation and building the foundation of a strong community of change agents
Best practice title: Journey Summer School
Best practice summary: The Journey is a residential educational program unique because of its methodological core and pedagogy, which combines skills development and personal development with learning about systems transformation through contextualized and experiential learning and prototyping.
Due to Covid in 2020 and 2021 the Journey has been delivered online.
By whom: EIT Climate-KIC
Key ingredients / description: The Journey has been running since 2010 as a summer school for young people (18-30), master students and young professionals. It has generated over 2,500 alumni and over 480 innovative climate solutions. However, the program does not only generate ideas and solutions, it encourages participants to act, and transforms the individuals that take part. It is a personal and community journey, all delivered in an online format this year. It prepares young people for the complexity and uncertainty in navigating challenges related to climate innovation and empowers them to act in a way that is meaningful to them and the ecosystem in which they operate.
While the entrepreneurial mindset dominated in the past decade, now a systemic understanding of complex, wicked problems and an adequate leadership approach are at its core, in line with EIT Climate-KIC’s mission. Climate crisis and connected challenges do have a dynamic, social, and generative character and require proper responses to be successfully addressed. The capacities to support the generation of such collaborative solutions need to be in the areas of entrepreneurial-, systemic-, participatory-, innovative- and personal leadership.
Context (if applicable): N/A
Audiences (if applicable): University students and/or young professionals
Documents (if any): Journey host/coach guidance and Journey participant guidance 2021
Links (if any): https://journey.climate-kic.org/
Key success factors / How to replicate: To successfully deliver the online Journey for 2021, we need support from a journey delivery community. This community will consist of a number of international host locations and professional coaches, to jointly design and execute a unique and life changing learning experience for the participants.
Contact person: Silvia Doglioni eit-hei@climate-kic.org
Keywords (at least 5): leadership, education, collaboration, co-creation, personal development