Here's just a small sample of the innovative solutions and research we are working on.
Impact investment
Cambodian Affordable Housing Impact Investment Fund (CAHIIF)
The Urban Platform Studio is exploring market opportunities and investment approaches for People in Need, which aims to deliver significant impact and return (social + financial) across the affordable housing ecosystem in Cambodia
digital mapping urban landscapes
Kolorob app, Dhaka, Bangladesh
A start-up initiative with Save the Children Australia and Save the Children Bangladesh to design and develop an online platform to map services and businesses in slums and informal settlements in Bangladesh. The Urban Platform Studio advices the project on development to improve mapping and data collection in the hardest to reach places.
IDEATIOn and SERVICe design
MIT SOLVE and Kolorob jobs
The Urban Platform Studio worked closely with Kolorob Jobs and Save the Children International to ideate and design an online job marketplace for young people (16-24) seeking work in the formal blue-collar market in Bangladesh. By crowdsourcing opportunities from youth and employers, the project aims to address information asymmetries in the labour market, help youth build employment and training networks, and makes it easier for them to find training and employment opportunities.
Research and strategic insight
In 2017, The Urban Platform Studio used agile research methods to develop a rapid evidence review on urban market and devleopment trends, issues and opportunities to inform the strategic priorities of our client. Viewed through a lens of multiple deprivations, we provided a description on urbanisation trends, and an overview of how children and families experience urban poverty and deprivation.
Co-creation and rapid prototyping ICT4D
The Urban Platform Studio collaborated with Save the Children and Accenture Development Partners to co-create a solution blueprint for and test extended reality (augmented and virtual reality) as way to improve vocational awareness and employability skills amongst urban youth in Vietnam.
building a resilient Urban Resettlement program
In partnership with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Save the Children, The Urban Platform Studio co-designed and -facilitated a theory of change workshop with NGO's, local government, and CSO's in Manila, Philippines, to explore pathways for more a human-centred urban resettlement process. We also co-created an organisational strategy to tackle the most pressing urban and social issues in Luzon.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING POLICY and STRATEGY
Working with Habitat for Humanity, we explored the policy solutions across the affordable housing landscape in Cambodia. The Urban Platform Studio developed the first policy brief on affordable housing in Phnom Penh; and designed a new strategy for Habitat for Humanity that included a range of actions to improve the housing market for the bottom-of-pyramid (BoP) clients.