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What is the Jugaad Programme?
This past October, the Asian Youth for Impact (aypact) programme wrapped up the Jugaad 2.0 initiative successfully! The term ‘Jugaad’ comes from the Hindi term that refers to the gutsy art of improvising an ingenious solution in the face of limited resources. In this year’s programme, 18 young participants aged 18-30 curated 14 innovative solutions for social impact problem statements posed by leading Asian companies.
The Jugaad initiative was created in support of Citi Foundation in 2023 to bridge the efforts of seasoned corporations with aspiring youth entrepreneurs. This year in Jugaad 2.0, AVPN is empowered to have completed this programme again with a set of corporations like Monde Nissin, McDonalds Philippines, and Evident Research to mentor youth innovators in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
As we closed off our recent Jugaad 2.0 cohort, 14 pitched solutions have been shortlisted to a final 6, in which the companies are reviewing to find the most fitted solution to the problem statements given to participants. The grit and dedication of inspired, young entrepreneurs is a testament to the incredible potential of youth to make a difference with the right support.
What markets participated in Jugaad 2.0?
With the positive results from the first cohort, Jugaad 2.0 aimed to continue a similar mission of bridging young social entrepreneurs and established corporations interested in social impact.
During the course of the programme, Jugaad 2.0 called for applicants from the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand.
Applicants who were up to the challenge to create innovative change with support of mentors must have had prior experience in social impact work and an interest in social entrepreneurship.
Following their applications, due diligence interviews were conducted to ensure accuracy of each applicant and relevancy towards their own motivations and the programme’s vision.
What are key differentiators in the Jugaad programme?
Since this was the second year executing on this initiative, ayPact ensured to make insightful iterations for the second cohort of participants.
The Jugaad hackathon takes the unique approach of highlighting:
- Youth Entrepreneurs: bringing young, highly motivated employees through a global impact leadership programme to incubate their entrepreneurial ideas.
- Experienced Leaders: Creating a channel for senior leaders to engage and mentor younger employees.
- International Platform: Provide an international platform for all participants to provide insight on their learnings from the experience and share their learnings to other corporations.
What were some of the key problems solved during the programme?
During the course of the programme, Villgro Philippines, a key partner to Jugaad, developed problem statements through an ideation workshop with the corporate partners in order to identify key operational issues to solve in the impact space.
In regards to guidelines, the problem statements needed to fulfill the goals of; 1) aligning with the prompts with the UN’s 19 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), 2) meeting Jugaad’s strategic goals, and 3) being measurable to see positive growth and impact.
Here were the key problem statements from the programme:
How was mentorship support provided?
What allows the Jugaad programme to stand out is the involvement of mentors in the development of each innovative solution. From ideation, conceptualisation, prototyping, testing, validation, all the way to value proposition and pitch deck preparation for DEMO day, the mentors provided helpful constructive feedback and support from their years of expertise in their respective fields to assist the young entrepreneurs.
Each participant was matched with the mentors based on their unique expertise. Overall, there was a desire to create diversity in each of the teams in order to encourage multi-perspective problem-solving.
Through this multistep process, the goal is to bring together youth and experienced leaders to tackle these prompts whilst considering SDGs.
Here were some of the team formation criteria:
Key Matching and Team Formation Principles:
- Align participant goals with mentor expertise: Ensure a strong match between participants’ SDG focus areas and mentors’ backgrounds.
- Form diverse teams: Group participants with similar SDG focuses and varied occupational backgrounds to encourage multi-perspective problem-solving.
- Balance design thinking expertise: Match team members with varying levels of design thinking knowledge to foster peer learning.
- Facilitate effective team collaboration: Ensure teams have a mix of skills and perspectives to maximize collaborative potential
- Carefully match mentors for one-on-one guidance: Ensure mentors offer personalized support and expertise to address the unique needs of individual participants or those working in teams.
- Drive meaningful mentorship: Encourage mentorship that leads to innovative, actionable solutions for corporate challenges aligned with sustainable development goals.
What’s next?
To learn more about Jugaad and how it champions youth-led innovation in partnership with corporations, visit here or reach out to us at [email protected] to find out more.
