Impact Innovation Podcast by Startup42 Media

This is episode of the Impact Innovation podcast, Michael Waitze and guest co-host Daniel McFarlane, were fortunate to converse with Stéphane Rousseau, the Director of International Field Immersion Courses at the School of Global Studies at Thammasat University. He brings an enormous wealth of experience to the conversation after decades of humanitarian, human rights, and civil society work across Asia and the Pacific.

Over the years, his work has presented many ethical and moral challenges. It is not the uplifting work many people think it is, Stephane suggests. The people you could not help or the people left behind are the ones that stay in your memory.

Without referencing social innovation specifically, Stephane provides multiple examples of how people and organisations have subverted structures of power and created innovative approaches to address pressing social problems. Listening to Stephane, it is evident social innovation is nothing new. It just has a new label and a fresh look.

Stéphane discusses how in the early 1970s, French doctors, frustrated by the then-international humanitarian regulations (e.g. giving only to the sovereign States to decide) that were impeding their capacity to intervene for the victims of war, set-up Médecins Sans Frontières.  They continue today as an organisation of impartiality, independence and neutrality.

In his work for The Global Fund in Geneva, he has observed the power of involving those who are afflicted by HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, in programs to end these epidemics and revitalise the communities impacted by them. They work harder than anyone to stop these epidemics and relieve the people impact by them. Stephane points out it often requires a power shift and cultural change to give voice and power to the people that are best positioned to enact change.

In humanitarian work, Stephane highlights that it is usually soft skills and emotional intelligence that enables someone to make a sustainable impact. In his work as the Director of International Immersion Programs, he is supporting young people develop the skills and intelligence to make a positive difference in the world. Every summer he welcomes public health students from University of California to experience life on the Myanmar-Thai border at Mae Sot and examine how health and well-being can be improved in refugee and border communities. It is through these experiences his students gain the emotional skills that will support them for years to come.

Stephane is developing new immersion programs in the region to incorporate students from multiple disciplines so they can experience boundary spanning, which Stephane describes as the power of bringing together the skills and perspective of different fields. Boundary spanning also sums up his unique skills and expertise developed over 25 years working across the region.

The second episode of the Impact Innovation podcast is an energizing lunchtime conversation between Courtney Savie Lawrence and Michael Waitze.  Courtney, originally from Nashville, Tennessee, arrived in Asia seven years ago with the perspective “the world is so much bigger than our own bubble.” After co-founding a social enterprise in the US, she was recruited to develop a Global Studies program at a university in Hiroshima. After a few years in Japan, Courtney followed her now-husband to Bangkok, where she teaches at the School of Global Studies at Thammasat University in Bangkok and facilities workshops and training on design thinking and social innovation. She describes Bangkok as one of her favourite places and “a dynamic city of innovation and change in the region."

For Courtney, social innovation is about “thinking really creatively in fresh ways that are going to be disruptive in terms of changing the status quo and meeting the global challenges that are unprecedented."

In the first episode of the Impact Innovation podcast, Dipendra KC talks with Michael Waitze about his experience founding and running a youth organisation in Nepal, and a new masters degree program of Social Innovation and Sustainability at the School of Global Studies at Thammasat University.

When Dipendra and his friends were seeking work experience as young college students, they kept being asked if they had any experience. They didn’t, so they built an organisation through which they could get that experience. Its called Yuwa, which means ‘youth’ in Nepali and has the objective of giving young, like-minded Nepalese a platform to explore and experiment with their ideas for social change.

It began as an organisation of five unpaid, young students with no external capital and has become an organisation with 10 full-time staff, 100 active members, funding of four to five hundred thousand US dollars per year while reaching out to 5,000 young Nepalese around the county on an annual basis.  Through Yuwa, Nepalese youth have been able to impact government policy.

After Yuwa, Dipendra is embracing his passion for innovations in development and his fascination with big data for his Doctorate degree. He recently published a paper based on a study of around 40,000 NGOs in Nepal, which examined what determines their location and whether they are positioned where they are really needed.

At the School of Global Studies, he is also heading up a new Masters of Social Innovation and Sustainability. Targeted at working professionals, it will be run at the Thammasat University’s city campus on weekends and one weekday evening. Dipendra explains how the course will be problem-focused and give students the opportunity to examine problems from their real-world experience and develop solutions in an open, hands-on, and exploratory academic setting.

Just as Yuwa was turned into a platform for young Nepalese, Dipendra has a vision that the Masters in Social Innovation and Sustainability will be a springboard for people creating careers as social innovators and sustainability experts. You can learn more about the program by clicking here.