Shaping The Futures: Imece Summit

By Ezgi Buse Coşkun and Ayseli Karabekmez

On March 18th and 19th Imece, organized a summit called: “Shaping The Futures”. On its website, Imece defines itself as “a social innovation platform where people and institutions that create change come together and work together to find solutions to social, ecological and cultural issues which depicts their powerful determination to create change. The summit was held online on the Harvard Business Review platform and featured speakers from all around the world, including Turkey. There were many important names, from Ekrem İmamoğlu to the CEO of ideao.org, Jocelyn Watt. During the summit, two important questions were explored: “How can we accelerate the proactive work of individuals and organizations towards transformation for the better?” and “How can we promote knowledge transfer and cross-sectoral cooperation for this purpose?”

Drawing by Emre Güzel

The summit created a space for discovering

change and with all the great speakers the result was a great deal of inspiring content. In order to keep a record of the summit’s content, Imece decided to formulate a team of changemakers that would gather to harvest it. The team consisted of young people from universities and high schools around Turkey, as well as two students from colleges in the US. They both helped with the organization of preparatory meetings and content harvesting. Both were Robert College alumni and former members of the RC Social Entrepreneurship Club, Alumnus: Deniz Cengiz (RC’17) and İhsan Uyan (RC’19).

There were three preparatory meetings in which these young people got the chance to get to know each other, they discussed the issues they were concerned about the most as well as their dreams and hopes for the future through an İkegai workshop. The idea exchange between people that had different interests and backgrounds lead to great insights.

Four members of RC SEC were part of the changemakers team. They actively participated in the exploration of two important themes: “Communities for Impact” and “Businesses for Impact”. “Communities for Impact’’ mainly focused on increasing community involvement in the design of solutions to problems. The idea that “people who live the problem are the ones closest to solving it” was emphasized. The importance of uniting instead of dividing a community was also highlighted. Community cohesion can be achieved if every member of the community is involved in the process of change. The young changemakers expressed that they expected local governments to empower communities by becoming facilitators rather than leaders.

The changemakers also think communities should have power and be able to identify ways to solve their problems, taking on the responsibility for finding reliable information to inform their decisions. Last but not least, they demanded an objective media that provides an accurate source of news.

Participants exploring the theme of Business for Impact got to know the business models and sustainability strategies of companies more closely, understood their goals and visions, saw their contributions and effects to entrepreneurship, and grasped the role of communities in the impact process. They also had the chance to learn how companies recycle their societal input and integrate social entrepreneurship into this process. B Corps, which are the companies that adopt sustainability as a principle, making decisions that take into consideratıon all its stakeholders and transparently communicate its actions to consumers, were also represented. Participants got to listen to important names in the ecosystem, such as B Lab Europe's representative Joey van der Brink, Reflect Studio's co-founder Ece Altunumral and Anagnosti John Choukalas, the head of Apivita’s Human Resources, Education & Sustainability.

By the end of the summit, changemakers came together to write a manifesto to call organizations, communities, and governments to initiate change. During the writing stage, the changemakers evaluated the current situation of the stakeholders and the ideal position a stakeholder must possess in 2050. They highlighted what has to be done in order to make a systematic transformation and accelerate it to create a generative ecosystem. Being leaders that are unifying rather than discriminatory, changing mindsets to achieve transformation, focusing on the planet and people, and being communities where services come to the fore rather than individuals were the prominent items. The content and the manifesto later will be published on an interactive website to visualize the great work the changemakers put out and make the content more accessible to more people. Imece Summit provided a place for everyone to become a part of a sustainable and impact-generating ecosystem and accelerate the change.