SUN WALKING LABS

"where imagination is the biggest nation in the world"

Sustag4all: Jacob Weiss, Jacquie Kay, Luis Villegas, Natalia Estrada, Rocky Weitz. 2019

The Sun Walking Lab is the core of the Sun Walking Group. It is the incubator, accelerator, and launch pad for projects, ideas, products and services, and a platform for others. It is the platform to launch start-ups, ideas, organizations, small businesses, development projects, community corporations and innovations. The Sun Walking Lab serves as a comprehensive lab to grow other labs, institutes, hubs, centers, and R&D units. It provides the meat to the structure and the research -metrics/analytics, the ethical compass or anchor for our clients.

Sun Walking is a lab, producing innovation for itself as well as promoting projects that relate, from globally - to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) of the UN, to those locally and in communities throughout the world. It's metrics/analytics are those used by social impact and mission-oriented groups; sustainability and resilience guidelines; and meet a strong return on investment . Sun Walking helps communities and countries form their own innovation labs in natural and human environments. Some are research centers, social ventures, NGO's, business start-ups, or just ideas that need to see the light of tangiblity and reality.

"we create 'change' in the marketplace"

As clients develop their goals and mission, Sun Walking supports them from a technology and innovative base; a social, impact integrating goals and projects; a sustainable and resiliency plan; and funds to do all of these. Sun Walking helps organizations understand that they are labs. It also serves as a lab for them and in developing its own innovations.

Underlying the incubating and launching of the ideas, projects, and enterprises, is developing the steps to goals, missions, outcomes. How do we adapt to external forces and change internally to enable that with efficiency and effectiveness; tools and participation of all stakeholders? How do we mitigate climate change, to steward the environment, to re-invent or re-engineer our lands, our waters and our work with both to meet basic human and earth's needs? The labs, hubs, institutes, centers, incubators - these are the "spaces" and "places" that allow these ideas to grow. Today, throughout the world, labs are popping up everywhere to demonstrate the ingenuity and aspirations of people adapting to the changes in their worlds.

We then develop alliances and partnerships providing back-up, advisory and coaching services, mentoring, management and governance; connections and networks; and most of all, developing a strong stakeholder involvement and ownership base through collaboration.

Swappl team: Nndeka Sobers, Ayna Verella, and Jason Tang. “SDG Spotlight Winner” award for NTT Data’s Challenge at MIT, 2018

Our key projects today focus on improving marine resources for food and economic security; developing innovations to combat environmental degradation and social needs - we do this through strategic planning, financing and integration of existing resources and needed ones - developing internal resiliency mechanisms.

Be a part of this effort - integrating and re-inventing our outlooks, aims and outcomes.

Sun Walking Labs, is the non-profit arm of The Sun Walking Group., Here is where ideation, incubation, innovation, and even dreams, are initiated and implemented. This is where work, education, and ingenuity become reality or otherwise.

The Lab, thus, has three purposes:

To generate the “lab” concept in local settings. This means to begin to introduce a stronger research and development aspect to projects. Donor agencies now require more evidence-based and scientific approaches; good metrics and analytics. Today’s generation of educated locals can now take leadership and work with appropriate stakeholders to be involved in governance, decision-making and problem-solving. We see the importance of communities engaging not only as stakeholders, but taking ownership and being responsible for projects in their own communities, Local to local, Sun Walking works globally to integrate sustainable goals and iterate the impact of energy and the environment in decisions and outcomes.

To be an incubator for start-ups, non-profits, ventures – social impact, technological products and systems development. It works primarily as a fiscal manager for non-profits while providing soft skills to bolster the beneficiary’s business and management models and practices. More specifically, in line with its value system, the incubator focuses on building relationships and provides:
- Organizational development and business management skills
- Advice and counsel - financial, business to meet a triple bottom line
- Access to finances, connectors and leaders in the field

"we access sustainable financing resources - options for resilience"

To provide access to sustainable fund raising sources, fin-tech, financing assistance. From developing local trusts, rainy day funds to donor agency and private sector financing for organizations, project and product financing. Utilizing modern technologies to assist farmers, for example, in obtaining credit, developing endowments for organizational sustainability, building cooperatives, banks, developing community development finance institutions - from partnering to leveraging financing.