Abstract:

In 2013, Singapore Polytechnic conceptualised and piloted a 2-week programme in a local community in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Aptly named as Learning Express or LeX, the 2-week programme was designed to introduce the fundamentals of social innovation to students by working directly with the local communities on issues and challenges such as to improve a certain process or productivity or to bring in new solution to a pain point that the communities faced. Since piloting in 2013 with only 50 students, the LeX programme has grown to impacting more than 5,000 youths, over 200 facilitators and 300 communities from the ASEAN region, China, Japan and Korea.

Led by a collective effort of facilitators in the region, the students apply the Design Thinking methodology to gain a deeper understanding on the needs of the local communities. The insights gathered by the students will help them co-create purposeful and sustainable ideas to tackle challenges faced by the community, e.g., improving the process of weaving baskets and other aspects of the community’s livelihood.

While the programme was successful in terms of its reach to the communities in Asia in less than 5 years, the programme begs a deeper investigation into how learning can be continued without unnecessarily burdening the communities as just a study subject but with actual innovation and sustainability. This article detailed the explanation on the design of the LeX ecosystem and how it is structured across Asia. The second half of the discussion focuses on the types of international project collaborations and innovative solutions and how they play a significant role in curating learning sustainability among the students, facilitators and communities who are the key stakeholders in the LeX Ecosystem.

Keywords:

Innovation, Social Innovation, Design Thinking, International Collaboration, Multidisciplinary, Applied Learning, Impact.