The situation that inspired the movement

Due to the national economic situation, many Kenyans are forced to start their own companies to secure their income, but it was difficult to get access to knowledge about the required strategic steps or helpful tools to do so. Consequently, many of the resulting businesses do not manage to survive on the market in the long term – a current issue in several undiversified and emerging economies. This is what Michael Huebl coincidentally learned in his initial contact with Prof. Rodney Reed, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs of the African Nazarene University in Nairobi, Kenya, during a private trip in 2015. As an entrepreneur and founder himself, Michael had the idea to pass on his knowledge to the teachers and students of the Africa Nazarene University and promised Prof. Rodney Reed to come back with an appropriate training concept as soon as possible.

Design Thinking as the solution

Through colleagues and friends, Michael became familiar with the Design Thinking concept. Design Thinking is a human-centered approach that allows us to tackle complex problems in an interactive and iterative process and ultimately results in “outside-the-box” solutions. Together with a small group of entrepreneurs and Design Thinking experts, we started an experiment:
What if we develop a program that enables young people all over the world to tackle the most complex challenges in their community with new approaches to innovation and entrepreneurship? The idea of a Design Thinking Challenge for good was born.

The start of it all

Only a few weeks later, the first team arrived with 20 experts. Together with local students and teachers, they conducted the first Impact Week ever to develop promising business ideas that tackle Kenya‘s economic problems. This was the beginning of the Impact Week.

Getting other people involved

After the first successful Design Thinking Challenge that managed to unite and inspire people of different backgrounds, the concept had to be adapted to become financially and organizationally stable to create impact for even more people. At the same time, instead of just participating in the challenge, the locals should be empowered to conduct their own Design Thinking workshops or challenges in the future. Therefore, the “Train-the-Coach” workshop was added, and local stakeholders were trained in the method and gained coaching experience so that they are able to spread the knowledge to their communities.

Growing collaboration and support

To ensure financial sustainability, the team included companies such as Lufthansa and SAP, which sent employees to participate in the Design Thinking training alongside local participants, creating a unique intercultural learning journey that allowed them to engage with locals on an equal level.The concept grew mature and scaled internationally. While we solely focused on Kenya in 2015 and 2016, we started to scale the Impact Week in 2017. The challenges we faced in the different countries inspired us to move on. In the following years, engaged volunteers organized Impact Weeks in various countries, such as Nigeria, India, Rwanda, Colombia, Nepal, and Jordan. As Impact Week is not about numbers but about sustainability, our greatest achievement was that one of our local partners, whom we had trained the years before, completely independently organized the Impact Week in Kenya. We were able to transfer enough knowledge to the local community so that they were able to grow by themselves in 2017. What followed was a 2018 full of superlatives. Our Kenyan community organized three more events in Nairobi, Kibera (one of the poorest areas in Kenya), and, even more impressively, they crossed borders and organized one event together with their friends in Uganda.
Challenges and changes during the pandemic
The pandemic reduced international travel and large gatherings to a minimum. This is when our volunteers came up with the idea to conduct virtual challenges. They developed a 2.5-day program where Design Thinking coaches could virtually guide a team of students through the process and develop ideas on how to combat the issues arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Post-pandemic developments

Since 2022, Impact Week has organized in-person workshops again and tried to further develop the concept to increase the chances of ideas from the Impact Week Challenges transforming into social enterprises. We introduced the so-called ‘track mentorship,’ where student groups connect with primarily local organizations that are active in the same problem space they are tackling to gain further insights and create potential partnerships after Impact Week.

Now we can proudly look back, knowing that this was the start of a global movement that not only transformed the lives of thousands of students, young people, employees of NGOs and incubators, and teachers worldwide but also resulted in many lasting friendships across countries and cultures. However, the story is far from over. More countries lie ahead of us, and with them, more friendships and even more adventures.

Do you want to join us? We are more than thrilled to welcome you to our community!