WHAT WE DO

UNLEASH offers different programs for youth to co-create a sustainable future by addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their community, region, or worldwide:

UNLEASH Innovation Lab, global and regional events for developing innovative solutions

UNLEASH Hacks, community-led innovation sprints for solving local challenges

UNLEASH Plus, global incubator for bringing SDG solutions from early versions to launch

Our Innovation Process

In our programs, we use the unique UNLEASH Innovation Methodology to enable young people to translate sustainability challenges into impactful solutions for the SDGs. Our methodology is built around a collaborative innovation process, based on human-centered design principles. In a nutshell, human-centered design starts with focusing on the people you want to design for and ends with tangible products or services, developed to suit their specific needs. The process follows five steps:

Problem Framing

Defining a problem based on user needs and clear insights

Ideation

Brainstorming and selecting ideas to solve the problem

Prototyping

Creating simple versions of the idea to understand how it will work in real life

Testing

Testing the solution with users, learning, and adapting

Implementing

Planning and launching impactful solutions

UNLEASH Global Innovation Lab India

UNLEASH Innovation Labs are global events to develop new, innovative, and scalable solutions to address the SDGs. Every year until the culmination of the 2030 Agenda, we’ll bring together 1,000 young people from around the world for a week of innovation, in a new destination each year!

The next Global Innovation Lab will take place in Karnataka (India) from December 3rd – 10th.

Regional Innovation Lab

Our first UNLEASH Regional Innovation Lab took place in Nuuk (Greenland) from August 20th to 27th 2022. It gathered 200 young people from across the Arctic and Nordic regions, who developed 40 innovative solutions to sustainability challenges that affect that area of the world.

UNLEASH Plus

UNLEASH Plus is a 6-month online incubation program for young entrepreneurs working on solutions that contribute to the SDGs. The program is co-hosted by Chemonics international and provides teams around the world with the right skills, tools, and mindsets to test and launch early-stage solutions, and design them for large-scale impact.

UNLEASH Hacks

UNLEASH Hacks are locally organized 2-day events (“hackathons”) for creating a positive local impact. Young people participating in a UNLEASH Hack work together to come up with ideas that contribute to the SDGs in their local community. They get the opportunity to learn from local experts and gain tools to transform their ideas into tangible solutions.