UpSocial Canada
UpSocial Canada recognizes that people feel the pain of poor planning, bad policy or broken systems at the local level. The problems are personal. Understanding the challenges people face means working in community, with neighbours, community services, schools, small and medium sized businesses, councils and many others. UpSocial Canada works to understand how problems are experienced, how they intersect with city-wide, provincial or national systems, and then we work with you to find programs and initiatives to address those challenges.
We contribute to solve social challenges through innovations oriented to scale their impact.
What change do we need?
Social challenges are increasingly complex and require the commitment and participation of multiple actors with capacities to generate lasting change.
To significantly improve people’s lives, we need more effective, efficient and sustainable answers that are able to secure significant reach in accordance with the problem’s dimension.
What is our proposal?
Our proposal consists of strengthening all agents of change. Against complex challenges and changing contexts, the capacities of each actor is key to drive innovative and scalable solutions.
From UpSocial, we contribute the following way to the development of solutions that are systemic, sustainable and oriented to scale.
Our work is organized around five lines of action:
Innovations
We guide processes driven by the demand of solutions to concrete challenges, through our own methodology which accompanies agents of change in the adaptation and adoption of innovative solutions.
Capacity building
We work alongside agents of change throughout their practice of addressing social demands with impact that is sustained over time, in a process that is oriented to build capacities and improve their skills to innovate.
Scaling
We take the lead to scale solutions with differential value and transformative potential. We also support processes of adaptation and implementation of innovations with impact evidence.
Policies
We enhance and support initiatives to contribute to a legal and regulatory framework that enables social innovation.
Learnings
We systematize and openly share knowledge generated through practice. We also promote cultural change that favors innovation in organizations and community.
UpSocial focuses on creating a powerful space for interaction and knowledge to generate trust and commitment between key stakeholders that do not usually meet in their normal work environments. After defining a shared vision of the social problems they want to address, as well as possible pathways for change, a common agenda is drafted to build and strengthen a local social innovation ecosystem.
Each project is necessarily:
Cross-sectoral and collaborative
Representatives from all sectors (community members, public and private stakeholders, academia and civil society organizations) are convened with the objective of focusing on a complex challenge and working collaboratively to address it.
Experimental
At the beginning, we may not know where we will end up, but we follow the process with a shared sense of purpose, working together towards a positive outcome.
Systemic
Projects are designed to address the root causes of a social challenge.
UpSocial Canada projects can be time and energy intensive but produce change unrealized in smaller-scale engagements. We understand your organization may prefer a stepped approach to the full process and we can discuss with you how to work towards a strong outcome together.
Read about our current projects on the blog.
While UpSocial and UpSocial Canada work together on many projects, the two offices operate independently. In Canada, Geraldine collaborates with many practitioners, most frequently with long time colleague, Jo Reynolds.
UpSocial is a global team
UpSocial launched in Barcelona in 2010 under the leadership of Miquel de Paladella. Together, our obsession is to provide systemic, scalable solutions to social challenges. UpSocial’s work is based on understanding how changes happen, how they are activated and accelerated, and how they transcend a particular project or organization and become systemic. Visit the home site here.
UpSocial created a podcast series to celebrate their 10 year anniversary. Listen by clicking the podcast image below or explore their database of proven innovations uncovered through 10 years of work.
