What you need to know about the Social Good Summit

MANILA, Philippines (3rd UPDATE) – Every year since 2012, Rappler has been organizing the Social Good Summit in the Philippines. 

But did you know that the summit is just part of a bigger initiative? Here are some fast facts on one of the world’s biggest gatherings of movers, shakers, and innovators.

1. ‘Opening the conversation’ 

In 2010, Mashable, the United Nations Foundation, the United Nations Development Programme, and 92nd Street Y started bringing together people – from world leaders to grassroots activists – to discuss possible solutions to the world’s toughest questions.

Since then, the Social Good Summit has been held annually in September, around the time world leaders are expected to convene at the UN Headquarters to discuss global issues.

Henry Timms, Social Good Summit co-founder and deputy executive director of 92nd Street Y, wrote in his blog that the Social Good Summit was launched to “open the conversation” of the otherwise very exclusive UN meetings to the “connected generation” which has a lot to offer to the table.

2. Keyword is ‘global’

While the main event is typically held in New York City in the US, the Social Good Summit is sustained by an international community.

Meet-ups and events all over the world play an important role in the success of the Social Good Summit. Through these gatherings, communities are able to take part in conversations on how they make use of available technology to build a brighter future.

During the Social Good Summit in 2014, communities in over 170 countries took part through livestream events, meet-ups, and online meetings. In 2016, more than 80 countries hosted meet-ups.

Apart from hosting the Philippine leg of this major event, Rappler has co-organized the Jakarta leg of the SGS in Indonesia from 2015 to 2017.

3. One hashtag to rule them all

The Social Good Summit encourages participants all over the globe to imagine what the world would be like in 2030 – and to join a global conversation around this shared dream through the hashtag #2030NOW.

The united hashtag tore down language barriers within the 45-language strong global audience.

In the Philippines, online conversations around the Social Good Summit trended number one in previous years and eventually opened to a wider audience as it trended on top globally, too. Based on data accumulated by Reach, Rappler’s data analytics arm, #2030NOW was able to maximize the potential of the online realm as it successfully connected people and shared ideas.

Using social media, the Social Good Summit was able to connect different people by engaging most of the world’s influential hubs.

The hashtag #2030NOW is used each year to facilitate the exchange of ideas from global citizens on how technology can unlock a better future for the whole world.

4. From conversations to ‘hacking society’

When Rappler hosted the summit for the first time in 2012, the conversation focused on introducing how social media could potentially be used for social good.

In 2013, a month before Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) struck, the conversation highlighted the use of technology and new media in tackling a key problem the Philippines is exposed to year in and year out: disasters. 

Agos, a collaborative platform that combines top-down government action with bottom-up civic engagement to help communities learn about climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, was officially introduced.

Held almost a year after Yolanda devastated most of the Visayas, the 2014 Social Good Summit was held in two locations in the Philippines: Manila and Tacloban City, which bore the brunt of the super typhoon’s fury, with more than 6,000 people dead.

The SGS in the Philippines that year tackled the threat of natural disasters and climate change and how a holistic approach – one that involves all sectors of society – is needed to address this.

In 2015, Rappler and the UNDP kicked off the global Social Good Summit through “Innovation +SocialGood”, featuring individuals and groups who use relevant technologies to alleviate social problems.

The event served as the Philippine debut of the Sustainable Development Goals, a new set of ambitious targets to achieve 3 extraordinary things in the next 15 years. The new goals were adopted by global leaders on September 15, 2015, a day before the summit was held in the Philippines. 

Held a year before the 2016 presidential elections, the event also emphasized the critical roles leaders play in drawing the nation’s blueprint for progress, initiating solutions, and providing an environment for technology that will facilitate reaching the global goals by 2030. 

It also drew attention to the power of social media to potentially influence the outcome of the upcoming polls.  

The 2016 Social Good Summit saw the debut of #HackSociety, the ideathon that harnesses the new democratic space to crowdsource “hacks” that address key issues. 

#HackSociety aimed to teach the innovation process through workshops that helped aspiring innovators finetune their ideas with the help of experts and mentors from the private sector, civil society, and government. In less than a month, it was able to crowdsource 50 ideas around key issues such as education and jobs; food, agriculture, and poverty alleviation; accountability and governance; environment and disasters; and peace and development.

In 2017, #HackSociety was a separate event leading up to the Social Good Summit. (READ: #HackSociety 2017: Innovate with purpose, leave no one behind)

The 2017 Social Good Summit challenged Filipinos to examine the purpose of innovation and use technology to help create a society that leaves no one behind.

There was no SGS in the Philippines in 2018, but Rappler held another edition of #HackSociety, where participants sought to build tomorrow anchored on the fusion of technology and socially accountable enterprise.

To learn more about the 2019 Social Good Summit in the Philippines, click here. – Rappler.com

Look back on past Social Good Summit events in the Philippines: 2012 • 2013 • 2014 • 2015 • 2016 • 2017