JICA Innovation Quest, or Jaikue for short, was launched in 2018 by young volunteers from JICA. It is an innovative attempt to create new ideas for international cooperation through “co-creation” by inviting a diverse range of human resources from different industries, with the aim of realizing open innovation that is not bound by organizational boundaries. Looking back on the past three programs, we asked those in charge of the program and participants to talk about what the new style of JACUE has brought about and their outlook for the future.
Mikuni Yamae, a founding member of the JICA Innovation Quest
Jaikue, a place for “co-creation” born from an open call for new projects
The development issues facing developing countries are becoming more complex and diverse every year, and is there a limit to what JICA can do on its own? Isn’t it necessary to create a system that brings together the strengths of a diverse range of people from different industries, both public and private, to create something new? The idea for the JICA Innovation Quest was born out of this awareness.
When Kaiho Yamae, one of the members of the “JICA Innovation Quest” (hereinafter referred to as “JIQUE”) project team, learned about JICA’s first internal competition for new projects, he and five of his colleagues in his third year at JICA developed a plan and applied for the competition. The project was selected with flying colors.
The concept of Jaique is “co-creation” and “innovation”. We aimed to create an open innovation platform where people with diverse knowledge and experience can meet, think together, and create new ideas for international cooperation. We aimed to create such an open innovation platform.
Mr. Yamae.
Thus, Jaique started in 2019, with the first program in the same year and the second in 2020. The theme of the first program was “SDG Goal 2 (hunger, food, nutrition, sustainable agriculture, etc.)” and the theme of the second program was “Achieving a society where no one is left behind. The participants were selected from among more than 80 applicants from diverse backgrounds, including young employees of general companies, people with experience in Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV), medical professionals, and teachers. The teams, including JICA staff, worked in small teams for three months to generate ideas to solve problems in their assigned target countries.
Each team brushed up their ideas through a series of meetings, receiving advice from lecturers from inside and outside JICA, and presented their ideas at the final presentation. The grand prize winner of the first round was a team that focused on solving a problem in Tajikistan. The team proposed tableware that solves lifestyle-related diseases that are a problem in the country. In order to reduce the amount of food and oil consumed, the center of the dish was raised to increase its bulk and provide a function to collect oil in the grooves. In addition to creating a beautiful “reflection plate” that references local traditional crafts, the approach of preserving the traditional culture of entertaining guests with a large plate was highly evaluated.
The grand prize for the second edition of the competition went to the Zambian team. The team created an idea to solve the country’s growing waste problem by utilizing the Zambian people’s high sense of beauty. The idea was to provide a photography service in which residents could bring their waste and in exchange receive wigs and costumes for rent.
First Grand Prize, Tajikistan Team Proposes Tableware to Prevent Lifestyle-related Diseases
Second Grand Prize – Zambia Team’s Idea: Photography Service to Solve the Waste Problem
Although several groundbreaking ideas were generated in this way, the program was drastically changed for the third edition of Jaique, held in 2022. In the first and second editions, applicants created ideas within the Jaique program to solve social issues in the countries they were assigned to. In the third program, however, the idea itself was solicited, and the idea was nurtured within the program. Mr. Yamae explains the reason for this.
In the first and second rounds, the best teams were given the opportunity to conduct field research, but the other teams’ ideas had not progressed to the stage where they could be tested. So for the third program, we decided to focus on field demonstrations, and while the first and second programs were about seeding ideas, the third program was about incubating the ideas that had sprouted.
The 39 ideas gathered were narrowed down to four, and the idea owners and supporters who would work together to address the challenges were recruited via video streaming. The Madagascar team won the final presentation, the culmination of five months of work.
The team focused on height measurement as a guideline for assessing the nutritional status of children in developing countries. The current practice of measuring children by holding them down while they do not sit still places a heavy burden on the field and is not very accurate. The company is currently making further improvements based on the feedback.
The 3rd Grand Prize and Madagascar team’s idea is a height measurement application to assess children’s nutritional status
Many of the teams that have participated in Jaique, including the three previous Grand Prize winners, are continuing their activities to this day. When I see how they are voluntarily continuing their efforts to commercialize their activities, I feel very happy that we launched Jaikue,” says Mr. Yamae.
Participants who are still working to realize their ideas
Ryo Ishihara and Aya Watarai, who participated in the 2nd Jaikue, are also continuing their activities as a Nepalese team. They are now continuing their activities in Nepal. They have been taking action with this in mind.
Ryo Ishihara and Aya Watarai of the 2nd Jaikuay, Nepal team (from left to right)
Final presentation by the Nepal team. Mr. Ishihara is second from the left and Mr. Watarai is sixth from the right.
The question was, “What can we do to empower Nepalese migrant workers in Japan once they return home?” This was the challenge we faced in Jaikue. Through repeated research, we came to understand the reality that many Nepalese people come to Japan as foreign students, but spend most of their time working part-time jobs and are not able to find employment. We hypothesized that this was because the current education system prior to coming to Japan does not provide opportunities for students to formulate their own future vision of what they want to do after working.
We thought that by providing students with a solid career education at the Japanese language school they attend before coming to Japan, they would be able to live in Japan with a sense of purpose,” said Ishihara.
Our activities in the Jaikuay program culminated in the proposal of a curriculum for this purpose. Later, with the cooperation of a Japanese school manager in Nepal who supported the idea, we launched Nepakari, an online career education curriculum.
At first it was difficult for the students to understand that they were thinking about their own careers, but I feel that their eyes are gradually becoming more serious. I would be very happy if the graduates would eventually leave our hands and become the ones running the program themselves. It would be great if the graduates would eventually leave us and run the program themselves,” says Mr. Watarai.
Another person who shared her story with us was Mirei Baeyama, the idea owner of the Senegalese team that participated in the 3rd Jaique. Tomoeyama, who was the youngest participant at the time of the event, was a junior in high school, but she had been working on the idea for a long time.
Mirei Bazan, Idea Owner of the 3rd Jaikuet, Senegal team.
In Senegal, where Tomoeyama traveled at his own expense, he surveyed local residents about the app (center).
I have always loved languages, and when I studied abroad in France as a freshman in high school, I was fascinated by the Wolof language spoken by Senegalese people. I did some research and found that although the official language of Senegal is French, most families speak Wolof and other indigenous languages, and many students have trouble keeping up with school classes conducted in French.
Mr. Tomoeyama applied to Jacquet in order to solve the problem of such language disparity. In the program, he worked on the development of a learning service called Corpus, which collected data on example sentences in French and Wolof. After completing the program, he traveled to Senegal at his own expense and used this learning service application with local elementary school students, who responded favorably.
I realized that in order to further improve the app, I need to learn more about myself. In the future, I would like to study more about Senegal and Africa as well as information and apps at university.”
Jaikue has opened the door to the infinite possibilities of “co-creation.
Jaikue generated many ideas for solving problems in developing countries and many activities with a view to putting them into practice. JICA’s first open innovation forum, which brought together a diverse range of people from different industries, became a great swell of activity involving many people inside and outside of JICA.
Tomoeyama says, “I was impressed by the process of one high school girl’s idea taking shape as an app, thanks to the many collaborators, including not only the team members but also JICA’s local office staff and outside experts.
I used to look at ‘international cooperation’ as something that is ‘something you give aid to. However, through this experience, I realized that it is important for the people in the target countries to take it seriously as their own business, and that it is something that is built through mutual cooperation,” said Mr. Ishihara and Mr. Watarizo.
Commemorative photo after the 3rd Jacquet, Final Presentation
Jaikue has become an epoch-making platform for “co-creation. Mr. Yamae says emphatically that he hopes to continue the program in the future.
Although the project was originally limited to a three-year period, I feel that a place where innovation can be created in collaboration with outsiders will continue to be essential for JICA, and I sense that the expectations of those around us are growing. I would like to continue to proactively aim to create opportunities for new international cooperation to emerge.
© Source JICA
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