Impact Week is a non-profit program that unites people from a variety of countries and organizations. It promotes innovation and entrepreneurship skill progression in developing and emerging economies as a foundation for sustainable growth by establishing sustainable business models using Design Thinking. It equips the next generation for employment, to become inspiring leaders – successful agripreneurs, entrepreneurs and game-changers, regardless of their field or level of expertise.

We consider ourselves as mentors, not as experts. That’s why we love bringing together people from all sorts of backgrounds who believe in finding innovative ways to solve the world’s problems. That being said, no Impact Week is possible without the help of motivated volunteers who are willing to donate their time and field expertise in exchange for an intensive intercultural exchange.

Besides each Impact Week being an original experience in itself, we developed a holistic program approach to ensure sustainable success.

As diverse as the people and cultures we encounter are, as distinct are the challenges of each local community. In Colombia people with an entrepreneurial mindset are still tainted by social inequality and criminal activities, Rwanda is facing a growing economy while struggling with suitable infrastructure. To allow for a better perception and handling of the various regional problems, we’ve identified overarching topic areas and organized them into tracks.

Many companies may struggle to innovate due to complexity or because they lack a clear, systematic and inclusive approach to innovation. Here is where design thinking may present an approach that can be applied in any context where there is a humanrelated challenge. From marketing campaigns to the development of new or enhancement of existing products or services, or even the optimisation of internal processes.

Design thinking is practical, intuitive, dynamic, interactive, flexible, and overall human-centered. It combines everything an innovation process should include.

We had a fantastic year 2019 with a total of eight Impact Weeks conducted by our organization as well as independently in Kenya, Uganda, and Colombia with support of several engaged volunteers from our network.

18–26 September 2019

India, home to over one billion inhabitants, is a fascinating country full of extremes: high tech metropoles and slums, IT expertise and no education at all, wealth and extreme poverty, deep spiritualism and crime, pure nature and heavy pollution. There are tremendous opportunities for improvement – for the environment, transportation, health, food supply, education – each one implying a unique opportunity for a country in transition. And as every 7th person in the world is living in India: “Whatever we solve for India – we solve it for the world!”.

6–14 November 2019

Nepal, the home of Mt. Everest and a sandwiched economy between China and India, has all plethora of challenges. The country primarily relies on subsistence agriculture and tourism industry. While a larger youth force is emigrating to foreign destinations, the country is seeing a parallel growth in the digital economy, tourism, and agropreneurship. This signals ample opportunities for budding local entrepreneurs and disruptive innovations. With our academic partner King’s College in Kathmandu, we are willing to tackle some of the major challenges prominent in the country.

Impact Week and its community are growing rapidly. 

Therefore we organize our key topics into the following strategic initiatives:

• Operations of Core,
• Business Model & Value Proposition,
• Communication & Branding,
• Content & Quality of Products,
• Community Management.