By Tom Noda
Through crowd-sourcing, electronics firm Royal Philips is soliciting ?innovative ideas? from the public that can improve the quality of lives of survivors in areas devastated by Typhoon Yolanda.
Philips on Thursday, Nov. 28, announced the extension of its “Meaningful Innovation” program in the Philippines especially in Yolanda-hit communities in the Visayas region. The campaign originally started in Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, and Singapore in 2011.
Fabia Tetteroo-Bueno, country manager of Philips Philippines, said the campaign’s outcome will result in a project involving rebuilding of infrastructure, access to healthcare solution, and enabling families to support again themselves.
The would-be project innovation will be deployed to affected areas in Samar all the way to Palawan.
Philips has partnered with the Department of Health (DOH), World Wide Fund for Nature Philippines (WWF-Philippines), I Can Serve Foundation, and social media netizens such as TV personalities Kim Atienza and Kelly Misa, including mother bloggers from the So Moms group who regularly write and advocate topics concerning proper mother and child care.
The campaign’s local version will go through three main phases such as Crowdsource, Create, and Deliver.
Philips is inviting Filipinos to submit their proposed innovations that will address the needs of affected communities at meaningfulinnovation.asia/philippines.
At the Create phase, both local and global executives from Philips, together with partners, will shortlist six ideas from all crowd-sourced ideas based on set criteria. Filipinos will then be urged to vote for innovations they deem best that will help achieve the goals set. The most voted idea will then become the project to be delivered.
The Delivery phase will include Philips’ partners in government, private organizations and the voluntary public.
Deadline of submission of entries is until Dec. 20, 2013.
“For us at Philips, the best way to innovate is with you and not for you,” Fabia said. “We do this by listening and understanding the needs of people, families and communities.”
Fabia said the goal is to make more or produce more with less.
“Idea innovations can be on how to make houses faster like prefabricated houses. On healthcare, since hospitals were destroyed it can be an option to make smaller ones or have more clinics and also use solar energy because power plants there were also destroyed,” she said.
Accordning to Lory Tan, CEO of WWF-Philippines, the program is meant to “push the public to become agents of change” and also to focus on sustainability and not just relief.
“We need now to switch relief-thinking to reconstruction, a shift to dole-out to dignity,” he said.
