SDG Summer School 2021: Open Source Health Solutions

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 June. [Link to application form]     

Participation fee: 2000 CHF, reduced fee of 1000 CHF for high-school students and 500 CHF for UNIGE students.

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

Contact Us

For all inquiries about the 2021 SDG Summer School, contact info@gt-initiative.org

SDG Summer School 2018

A snapshot of a previous summer school, where the theme was “Mobile Health for the SDGs”, with WHO and ITU.