UPSHIFT Facilitation Guides
A youth social innovation and social entrepreneurship programme
The UPSHIFT approach
UPSHIFT is a youth social innovation and social entrepreneurship programme, designed to build skills and opportunities for young people who are disadvantaged, due to (for example) poverty, gender, disability or ethnicity. The programme empowers young people with the skills and resources they need to identify problems in their own communities and design solutions for them.
We are always keen to share our learning with the wider community of organisations around the world that work with and for adolescents and young people in the social innovation and social entrepreneurship spheres. UNICEF Innovation therefore makes the UPSHIFT facilitation guides available for any organisation or individual to download and use. These guides form part of the overall programme, but are supplemented by outreach materials, mentorship approaches, incubation and seed funding. They therefore form only part of the broader UPSHIFT programme. It is particularly important to consider resources and support to turn ideas into action.
The guides are all aimed at facilitators who work with young people, rather than for self-directed learning. In our experience, it is very important to localise the facilitation guides for use with adolescents and young people in different countries, contexts or settings. This can include language, energiser activities, relevant examples and may also involve changing activities to make them e.g. more culturally relevant. We recommend using a human centred design process to undertake the localisation; working with young people, facilitators, and other key stakeholders.
UPSHIFT Social Innovation Curriculum
The UPSHIFT Social Innovation Curriculum consists of:
The Introduction contains an introduction to social innovation, the theory of change on which the rest of the curriculum is built, some tips on facilitating social innovation and localising the curriculum, along with some worksheets that can be used for participants during UPSHIFT Phase 1 and 2.
UPSHIFT Phase 1 contains 9 different modules that are designed to guide young people through a human centred design approach to identifying challenges in their local community, researching their impact on stakeholders and developing and prototyping potential solutions. UPSHIFT Phase 1 ends with a pitching (or storytelling) session.
UPSHIFT Phase 2 contains 10 modules that are based on the Business Model Canvas to support young people in turning an initial idea (created through UPSHIFT Phase 1) into a very early stage venture.
The UPSHIFT Bootcamp
The UPSHIFT Bootcamp toolkit provides the tools needed to facilitate a Social Innovation bootcamp for participants aged approximately 12-18 years.
It is a very compressed version of UPSHIFT Phase 1, with around 25 hours of content and designed to run over 3-4 days.
With this approach, it is expected that young people are already organised into teams and start with a clear idea of the social problem that they would like to solve. If this is not the case, it is recommended that you consider using the UPSHIFT Phase 1 facilitation manual instead.
Open Source: UPSHIFT facilitation guides
Terms of Use
UNICEF Innovation is open-sourcing the UPSHIFT facilitation guide(s) using a Creative Comms License.
This means you are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the UPSHIFT facilitation manual in any medium or format.
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
Under the following terms:
- Attribution — you must give credit to UNICEF and the UPSHIFT methodology, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
- ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
If you use and adapt UPSHIFT within your programming please do tell us about the results via email or Twitter and Facebook.
Many different people and organisations across UNICEF and partners have contributed to the development of these materials. However, specific offices and partners have made substantive contributions. This wouldn’t have been possible without UNICEF Kosovo (as the birthplace of UPSHIFT), UNICEF Jordan and Amani Institute, who co-developed UPSHIFT Social Innovation Skills Curriculum and UNICEF Tajikistan and Quicksand who developed the UPSHIFT bootcamp materials.
Additional Resources
Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Knowledge Brief on UPSHIFT: Supporting social entrepreneurship through youth employment interventions
UNICEF Programme Guidance for the Second Decade: Programming with and for Adolescents
South-South and Triangular Cooperation in Action: Advancing children’s rights and well-being through South-South and Triangular Cooperation
