InSTEDD designs and uses open source technology tools to help partners enhance collaboration and improve information flow to better deliver critical services to vulnerable populations. They envision a world where communities everywhere design and use technology to continuously improve their health, safety and development. InSTEDD’s mission is to improve global health, safety and sustainable development through:
• Building Capacity within communities to foster a local culture of innovation
• Creating Collaboration Technologies for social good
• Collaborating with End Users through a bottom up design and development process
• Ensuring Usefulness and Impact through research and evaluation
In 2008, InSTEDD launched the first iLab located in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with the goal of building technological capacity for addressing health, safety and sustainable development issues in the Mekong Basin.
At the InSTEDD iLab Southeast Asia, solutions are developed and evolved in the field. The iLab team designs and uses context-appropriate tools to help their partners overcome obstacles that hinder collaboration, allowing them to work more effectively to improve health, safety and development. They work side-by-side with their partners in their communities throughout the process of design, implementation and evaluation.
The InSTEDD iLab Southeast Asia team adapts existing tools to local contexts, provides training and support, and evaluates outcomes in a cycle of continuous improvement. By building local capacity, they help to ensure that the systems created are more relevant than when introduced by outsiders, and that necessary innovation will continue beyond the life of a single project. To learn more about the iLab Southeast Asia, please visit their website here: www.ilabsoutheastasia.org