SDG Summer School 2021: Open Source Health Solutions

Key Information

Dates: 5 July – 30 July 2021

Location: Geneva SDG Solution Space, in the heart of International Geneva, and at partner sites around the world.

Theme: Tackling health challenges set by partner organisations with open-source hardware and software solutions.

Partners: University of Geneva is teaming with the University of Paris and Yonsei University in Seoul.

Format: Students working in multidisciplinary teams guided by mentors from several Universities and International Organisations.

Applicants: Highly motivated high-school, undergraduate and Master students are welcome to apply. You must be 16+ on 1 July 2021.

Qualifications: Students from all backgrounds are welcome, including science and technology, media and design, public health and business.

Application: opens 28 April and closes 1 July (extended deadline). [Link to application form]

Participation fee: For participants in Geneva, 2000 CHF, reduced fee of 1000 CHF for local high-school students and 500 CHF for UNIGE students. Applicants can request a motivated fee waiver. No travel or accommodation support available.

Prizes: Top teams can apply to our SDG Accelerator programme to support further development of their project.

Certificates and credits: All eligible participants obtain certificates of completion and successful completion of the SDG Summer School is equivalent to 6 ECTS. Students should verify with their Academic Advisor if their Faculty can recognise the credits.

Educational Concept

The SDG Summer School is inspired by the growing sense of urgency worldwide to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs by 2030. We believe that we can enable today’s youth to play an active and meaningful role in tackling these goals, through intensive hands-on team-based innovation challenges. In the SDG Summer School, teams of university students, in close collaboration with International Organisations in Geneva, conceive ways to use crowdsourcing technologies and low-cost open-source hardware and software solutions to achieve concrete steps towards the SDGs, at a local, regional or global level. The SDG Solution Space contains a fully equipped Fab lab with digital fabrication technologies.

In the 2021 edition of the SDG Summer School, we are looking to build on the achievements of previous generations of students who have worked on Open Source Health Solutions, including:

Prototyping a hardware device to help the seeing-impaired navigate city streets
Developing a phone app that supports early-stage cervical cancer detection
Assisting health researchers with rapid analysis of Covid publications by developing a crowdsourcing tool
Creating a business model that provides women with free access to environmentally safe menstrual health products
Mapping open source diagnostic tests and local manufacturing of diagnostics in the Global South
Developing a breathing game controller for and with people in Geneva
Mapping human-animal interactions to prevent the next pandemic
Creating an information package on non-communicable diseases for an existing WHO open source app
Developing a set of solutions to make playtime in school more inclusive for children living with disabilities

All accepted participants will receive intensive mentoring and coaching to help transform these early-stage prototypes into impactful solutions and will become part of a global online community of young civic innovators.

The SDG Summer School will begin with a 3-days fast-track Innovation Bootcamp training.

The SDG Summer School includes, to the extent Covid restrictions permit, interactions with UN Agencies, International Organisations, NGOs, and other partnering organisations in Geneva.