SDG Summer School
2023 Edition
In 2023, the theme of the SDG Summer School is Open Source Health Solutions. Find out more about the Call for Challenges and how to register for the school.
Motivation: in September 2015, world leaders committed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. To achieve these goals, we want to enable today’s youth to play an active role in tackling the SDGs. The motivation of the SDG Summer School is for teams of University students, in close collaboration with UN and other International Organisations, to use crowdsourcing and low-cost open source solutions to tackle sustainable development challenges.
Example: the video below provides a snapshot of a previous summer school, where the theme was “Mobile Health for the SDGs”, with WHO and ITU.
Challenge-Based lnnovation
The SDG Summer School is all about team-based problem solving and hands-on prototype development, going from a conception phase to producing practical demos. The overarching goal is to impact the SDGs by enabling tomorrow’s innovators to participate actively in tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges, today. Mentors from international organisations in Geneva provide exciting challenges and extensive field experience. The methodology is inspired by Jean Piaget, founder of the International Bureau of Education, the predecessor of UNESCO. Piaget, who worked at University of Geneva for 50 years, encouraged educators to embrace a challenge-based mode of learning, which is at the heart of the crowdsourced creativity that this programme seeks to foster.
Previous editions
The SDG Summer School is constantly evolving. You can consult the pages dedicated to previous editions here: