Impact Week seeks to fuel development through ‘design thinking’

AMMAN — An innovation and entrepreneurship programme titled “Impact Week” will be organised for the first time in Jordan by a team of German experts and the German Jordanian University (GJU) in collaboration with various international practitioners from Lufthansa and SAP, among others. 

The event, which will take place at Ahli Club in Amman, will also be held in partnership with HELP Logistics (a programme of the Kuehne Foundation), Spark, Goethe Institute and IBTECAR Consulting, according to the organisers.

“This programme is conducted in various countries around the world, mainly in developing countries, in Africa, Latin America and India. It will be held in Jordan and the Middle East for the first time,” Jamil Alkhatib, general manager at IBTECAR Consulting and manager of programme innovation and entrepreneurship at GJU, told The Jordan Times on Wednesday. 

Impact Week is conducted in two phases, the first taking place from October 5 to October 7, and the second from October 9 to October 12, Alkhatib said.

In the first phase, 30 local and 18 international professionals will accompany the German experts, who will offer their expertise and innovative ways of “design thinking” to train the trainers in an intercultural environment where “all will learn how to deal with challenges facing the Kingdom related to various sectors”.

Once the first phase is complete and the junior coaches receive their training, the second phase will begin, targetting university students and high school students above 16 years of age. 

During this phase, the experts will supervise the junior coaches trained in the first phase, as they themselves train a group of five to seven students, who will choose a challenge to address and deal with.

“We aim to distribute between 100 and 120 students to the junior and senior coaches to learn to deal with local challenges in an innovative way,” Alkhatib said.

He added that during the programme there will be a competition based around the ideas that the groups come up with in order to tackle problems, with awards to help these groups implement at least part of their solution. 

The programme will allow students to mingle with different cultures and learn different ways of thinking, and registration can be processed online.

The lead coach will be Michael Kogel, from Heidelberg, Germany, who participated in Impact Weeks held in Nairobi 2016, Bogota 2017 and Guwahati 2018, according to the organisers. 

The Impact Week is a non-profit programme that promotes innovation and entrepreneurship in emerging economies as the basis for sustainable growth, according to the organisation’s website.

With the help of the creative design thinking method, the organisation enables local students to develop solutions to challenges in their communities and to eventually start their own businesses, the website adds.