Innovation through inclusion: migrants and students co-design change
What happens when student solution seeking meets the reality of migration? The answer is potentially transformative.
When migration is discussed, solutions often arrive before the problem is fully understood. That’s why the Lisbon Project and the ERA Chair in Social Innovation decided to do things differently.
“The issue of migration is so multidimensional and many times we’re too quick to jump to the solution without clearly understanding what the problem is. To solve issues we have to co-create, we have to listen, we have to collaborate” – Gabriela Faria, Lisbon Project founder and CEO
In Professor Anne-Laure Fayard’s Design Thinking for Social Innovation course, 30 students from over 10 nationalities worked alongside 4 migrant women – not as subjects of study, but as paid consultants bringing invaluable expertise. Unlike typical courses where external experts make brief appearances, the migrant consultants collaborated with students throughout, receiving both payment and a participation certificate from the ERA Chair in Social Innovation.
“Good ideas are good as long as they’re meaningful to the people who are facing an issue or a problem and so you need to get their input all along the process and you need to be ready to iterate.” Anne-Laure Fayard, ERA Chair in Social Innovation
From barriers to breakthroughs: projects shaped by migrant voices
Now in its second year, this course brings together lived experience and academic creativity to address real challenges faced by migrants in Portugal. The migrant consultants shared their stories of navigating Portugal’s systems: the struggle to obtain an ID number without knowing anyone, the barriers to employment despite relevant experience, the profound loneliness of arriving without community or language. They continued to collaborate with students across ideation and prototyping of potential solutions.
Migrant consultants, students and project partners at the Building Bridges exhibition
Earlier this year Nova SBE opened the Building Bridges exhibition, showcasing the outcomes of the innovative collaboration between students and migrant consultants from the Lisbon Project. Projects have included:
Your Journey in Lisbon – a digital platform guiding newcomers step-by-step through essential processes, from securing a tax number to finding work. With strong potential, this prototype is set to be integrated into Portugal’s gov.pt services via our partners at LabX.
Bites and Bridges – a lunchbox service featuring homemade meals prepared by migrant women, nurturing cultural exchange through food.
New Routes – a training programme focused on unlocking home-based small businesses opportunities for migrants.
Nurturing tomorrow’s bridge builders
Priyata Christian, a participating migrant consultant from India shared that “at the start of this course I think these students were unaware of the real situation but slowly, gradually they began to really understand what is happening, how things work and what the real struggles we have are. This is a new generation… people will go to higher places and have the ability to make changes.”
For the students, the lessons went far beyond learning about making prototypes. One reflected: “I vividly remember the first class when consultants shared their stories — it was the moment I understood how privileged I am, and how different perspectives on life can be.”
Collaboration is at the heart of this impactful course – unlocking solutions that work, relationships that matter and students who learn that the best ideas emerge when we co-create.