Our call for ideas is looking for the best ideas that change stuff that matters.
You can enter an idea that tackles absolutely anything - but we also wanted to give you some inspiration.
Check out the winning ideas from our previous Social Innovation Camps on over here.
Or how about thinking about some of these:
Recession 2.0: can the web help people get back to work?
As the Scottish economy has changed in the last thirty years, unemployment has risen to the top of the social agenda. In 1971, 34 per cent of Glaswegians worked in manufacturing jobs; by 2005 only six per cent did. The shifting industrial base has hit the city’s employment levels. Almost 20 per cent of Glaswegian 16-19 year olds are not in employment, education or training, whilst 20 per cent of adults are unemployed or too ill to work.
Now the current economic climate isn’t helping. According to recent predictions, Scotland can expect to lose 159,000 jobs over the next three years.
How could you help people find work or re-skill? Is there even the potential to think really big: could we start re-inventing parts of the financial system - small loans for example - from the bottom up?
So what could you do to hack the recession?
Calling all environmentalists
Here at Social Innovation Camp, green ideas have always been popular.
December’s Social Innovation Camp saw us working on the likes of Post Post, to tackle wasteful junk mail, Carbon Coop, to get people investing in renewable energy sources, and Own Grown, a market place for home-grown food.
We also ran one of our Social Innovation Meetups in London dedicated to all things environmental earlier this year where we had lots of great ideas for promoting green living.
With the likes of Do the green thing and AMEE (Avoiding Mass Extinction Engine), there’s some interesting environmental stuff happening in the UK at the moment. You could even use their data.
So get your green thinking caps on!
Healthier and happier
In the last 150 years, health care has improved thanks to advances in drugs and medical procedures, greater state provision of services like the NHS and a better understanding of why we become ill.
But what makes us sick is changing.
Recent figures show that over 64 per cent of men in Scotland are over-weight, whilst 22 per cent are obese - and the numbers are growing. Similar trends can be seen in poor mental health, alcohol-related harm, loss of well-being and a rise in sexually-transmitted diseases.
Scottish life expectancy is below most of Europe, but the country still has an aging population: in 2004, 63 per cent of people were of working age, whilst 19 per cent were pensioners. By 2041, it’s predicted that 57 per cent of the population will be of working age and 28 per cent will be pensioners.
We’re no longer dying from infectious diseases: we’re faced with chronic, long-term conditions which are often the result of behavioural and lifestyle choices, as well as an aging population.
So what could you do to help people make small changes to be healthier or live more comfortable lives with long-term conditions? We’ve had ideas focused on mental health and supporting those caring for aging parents before. What else could you do?
Tackling physical distance with virtual tools
Scotland has a population of 5 million people, almost 1 million of which live in rural areas.
Living remotely can hold all sorts of challenges for accessing public services such as education, transport links or health care. We reckon digital tools hold the potential to change that. It’s this belief that lies behind the likes of Distance Lab, an organisation bringing together digital media technology, design and the arts to redefine and overcome the disadvantages of distance in learning, health care, relationships and culture.
So tell us how you can use the virtual world to help make physical distance less of an obstacle.
But remember: your Social Innovation Camp idea can be about anything that you think needs solving. We’ve been sent some fantastic ideas focused on making transport more accessible, through to combating loneliness and accessible design for those with physical impairments. And your idea doesn’t have to be focused on Scotland or even the UK.



