People and cities in synergy: how Athens bloomed through citizens’ activism
synAthina connects the services of the municipality of Athens with formal and informal civil society groups. It began during a moment of crisis and is still going strong. We spoke with the project’s initiator and former Vice Mayor of Athens, Amalia Zepou.
This municipality reduced their waste by 20% in only two years
“We have reduced the amount of mixed waste by more than 20% in two years, this is 84 tons in absolute numbers or the equivalent of 13 fully loaded garbage trucks.”
Talking about change is not enough: parties must work on it
“Brexit changed my life. That night made me realise that I was living a European dream that not only was not shared by the majority of the people, but that these same people had been impacted by the narrative of populist political parties that pictured it as a nightmare to escape from.”
The digitalisation of community organising
During the last fifteen years, we have seen the emergence of new political movements globally with a community organising approach towards political engagement. Before that, we saw political parties trying to use mobilisation as their
6 projects that help homeless people regain control over their lives
The successful initiatives led by several European municipalities to get the vulnerable off the streets and into housing were one piece of good news to come out of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Success factors of Government Innovation Labs
Alexander Grünwald from GovLabAustria provides his reflections on the three success factors outlined above and how they are incorporated in the work of GovLabAustria.
Circling back to the benefits of a Circular Economy
We spoke with Cynthia Reynolds about the avenues through which Circular Regions support digital infrastructure and approaches to help both urban and rural communities make the shift from a linear to a circular economy.
MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA AWARDS 2021
The iValues Awards 2021 received 279 project submissions from all over the MENA region – more than anyone expected. We are excited to see such an outstanding number of participants and have now invited citizen
The key success factors of Government Innovation Labs
Government Innovation Labs (GIL) use creativity as well as systematic innovation processes and projects to find solutions to problems citizens and public administration face.
What is political innovation? 11 experts share their perspective
We invited eleven innovation-driven project owners, local changemakers and best practice creators to share their views on what constitutes political innovation today.
ProxyAddress: Lifeline for UK’s homeless
ProxyAddress, winner of The Innovation in Politics Award 2020 in the category Human Rights, gives UK’s homeless their lives back by giving them an address. We spoke with architect Chris Hildrey about how he came up with the idea and how not even a pandemic could stop him from making the project come to life.
