Central Asia Regional Innovation Day

May 21-23, 2003 Bishkek

The Central Asia Innovation Day is an opportunity to develop and give voice to innovative ideas for addressing development challenges in five Central Asian Countries - Tajikistan, Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. It is a way to identify and fund the best solutions to some of the most pressing social and economic concerns in these countries. The Innovation Day seeks to find solutions beyond established channels through an open, transparent, and competitive process with minimum cost and bureaucracy.

Practically speaking, the Innovation day brings visionaries and entrepreneurs together in an Innovation Competition where they "sell" their ideas to groups that can provide financial and or technical assistance support. It is a low-cost, low-risk way of identifying ideas that work on the ground and have the potential to be scaled up and meet urgent needs.

Focus of the Central Asia Innovation Day

The Central Asia Innovation Day will focus on small innovative projects based on the principle of Community Driven Development (CDD). The CDD approach differs from previous experiences in that it aims to bring out the voices of the poor, respond to their needs and concerns through local solutions, and give them more direct control and management over their own development. After decades of top-down development, CDD projects are designed to enhance bottom up approaches, whereby the poor and vulnerable communities are involved in all aspects of the project design, financing, implementation, management, and monitoring.

CDD requires great flexibility, ingenuity and context-specific approaches, since communities are not homogeneous in their make-up. As a result, CDD seeks to give the opportunity to NGOs, local communities and initiative groups to bring to life their own solutions to development. It is equally important to learn more from local communities about their experience and disseminate that knowledge as wide as possible, so that others could follow good examples. CDD is also an integral part of strengthening civil society human rights. It also is a means through which countries can make a more rapid and practical transition to a mere inclusive and democratic society. The CDD approach is an effective way to provide access to those public goods that are within the management capacity of community organizations.