UN Agencies and MIT's Solve Partner With Mohammed Bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity to Revolutionise Social Innovation

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This announcement reaffirms the importance of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by enabling and inspiring a worldwide community of makers to create transformative solutions to solve some of the world's greatest challenges.

A humanitarian champion who has impacted and improved the lives of over 130 million people across 116 countries, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, and Ruler of Dubai, has placed great emphasis on the role of innovation to reshape industries, and strengthen economies and societies.

By bringing together manufacturers, startups and entrepreneurs, and governments and NGOs to enable global collaboration and partnerships, the initiative will create an ecosystem to unlock and accelerate innovation designed to enhance global prosperity through product innovation.

"Creating an innovative global community of makers dedicated to spreading prosperity across the world, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity is designed to promote unconventional thinking, develop unobvious partnerships, and drive unexpected outcomes.  We are honoured and proud to be partnering with key UN entities to advance our shared mission - to build a stronger, better, more prosperous, more equal, and more empowered world," said Badr Al-Olama, Head of the Organising Committee for the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit.

The initiative combines the Mohammed Bin Rashid Global Maker Challenge, an online open-innovation platform through which 'makers' and innovators will apply a design-thinking approach to solve specific real-world challenges; and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Global Prosperity Award, a prestigious global accolade that recognizes and rewards social innovation, and promotes the benefit that manufacturing brings to humanity.

The initiative invites world-leading manufacturers and entrepreneurs to adopt one of the global themes identified by the partner UN agencies, and work alongside them through an integrated open-innovation platform that enables ideas to be shared and solutions to be co-created.

The themes are:

*Sustainable Energy: The challenge will tackle how renewable resources can be applied for humanitarian action, while also reducing inequalities through economic prosperity and industrialisation. 

*Digital Divide and Digital Literacy: The challenge will focus on ensuring underserved communities and vulnerable populations have access to digital innovation capacity that accelerates digital transformation, thereby narrowing the digital skills gap in the context of emerging technologies.

*Rural Transformation and Zero Hunger: The challenge will focus on promoting and enabling inclusive rural transformation in an increasingly urbanised world and enable investment in smallholder farmers, with a focus on developing entrepreneurship in agribusiness, specifically for women and young people, and achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger.

*Sustainable Cities: The challenge will tackle how cities can become incubators for innovation and growth, and drivers of sustainable development.

The comprehensive partnership and associated themes were announced in the presence of LI Yong, Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and Suhail Al Mazrouei, UAE Minister of Energy and Industry, as well as world-respected thought-leaders, ministers, academics, and business executives.

H.E. Eng. Suhail Mohamed Faraj Al Mazrouei, UAE Minister of Energy and Industry, said: "The Mohammad Bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity is rooted in the UAE's deep belief that innovation is able to overcome the difficulties that our world faces and open new horizons of development, growth and prosperity. The positive outcomes of this innovation should not be limited to one nation only - but by the whole world."

The initiative was first launched by His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, on the sidelines of the inaugural Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit, held at the Paris-Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi in March 2017.

For more information, please visit http://www.makingprosperity.com

Contact: Michael Wallis +(00)971-4390-1950, michael.wallis@wallispr.com