UNDP & Hyundai Motor Company partner to celebrate, crowdsource and accelerate bottom-up innovations.

From climate change to grappling poverty and inequality, local communities in the global south are facing the century’s biggest challenges. At the same time, they innovate, create, and pass on knowledge and solutions to address needs unmet by policies and market access.

Whether these are indigenous farmers in Ecuador using traditional knowledge to protect crops from animals and floods, informal workers in Ghana creating value from waste or grassroots communities in the Philippines inventing new business models by repurposing old machines.

These solutions have the promise and the opportunity to contribute significantly to economic growth, environmental protection, and social inclusion, which are all key ingredients to sustainable development.

Indeed, bottom-up innovations (local) by nature and (relevant) by necessity should be sustained and where possible, not just transferred but adapted across regions, SDGs, and ecosystems.To (achieve) this, UNDP through the Accelerator Labs is looking into, learning from, and building upon these local solutions rather than supplying or importing these from the outside.

And to (accelerate) and keep up with the pace of change, UNDP together with Hyundai Motor Company launch “for Tomorrow”, an initiative dedicated to celebrating bottom-up innovation, connecting local innovators who are creating solutions for a more sustainable future, and advancing these solutions to reach the ambitious goals set out in Agenda 2030.

UNDP and Hyundai Motor will support solutions shared on the “for Tomorrow” platform by advancing, sharing and building upon them with the help of the UNDP Accelerator Labs, a global network of 60 labs (expanding to 90 this year) that are tapping into local innovations to create actionable insights and reimagine sustainable development for the 21st century.

Find out more. Visit http://www.fortomorrow.org