PROJECTS

ICDP provides many opportunities for Pacific Connect Community members to strengthen relationships by working on economic development projects that arise from Pacific Connect Dialogues or Workshops. These collaborative initatives apply innovative technology solutions to Pacific challenges.

Learn more about the projects by clicking on the tabs below.

ACTIVE

Shifting Homes

Creating a virtual village to capture history, culture and educate on Climate Change.

Shifting Homes is a Virtual Reality (VR) experience that is all about creating a Virtual Environment to bring a Samoan village to life, recreating its past and present in an immersive and vivid way. The project will
document rising waters and further dramatic outcomes indicated through scientific data, and will present the impact of Climate Change on a village. Shifting homes will also explore future solutions in how the village will need to adapt in terms of housing and settlement. The contemporary VR artwork and experience will preserve and archive heritage and culture, and will provide new technology, mentorship, and up-skilling to Samoan youth and communities.

The project came to life at the Pacific Connect Network Dialogue on Creative Industries (Samoa, May 2019),bringing together Australian company, DP Immersive with a team of Samoan academics, historians and digital media and culture experts involved with the Pacific Connect Community network. The team has received over $75,000 in grants and awards, and is presenting the experience at this year’s 17th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale Di Venezia.

Shifting Homes fact sheet

Less than Container Load

Enhancing export market access

The Less than Container Load (LCL) Project seeks to address a significant bottleneck and barrier to export markets for small to medium farmers and growers in the Solomon Islands. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) make up 30 – 40,000 household (60% of total population) actively engaged in agricultural sector of the economy of the Solomon Islands, and yet most do not currently have access to export markets. Currently for every 5 containers that come into the Solomon Islands full, only 1 will go out full, which represents a huge loss in opportunities, productivity and carbon miles. Through using technology to increase efficiency and transparency, the project seeks to empower small to medium farmers and growers to access current information on logistics and markets, share and hence reduce their costs. Through being able to share in a container with other growers, small and medium growers will be able to gain unprecedented access to export markets and the whole process can be sped up and made more painless and efficient, which is a significant win for agents, producers and buyers. This initiative is potentially a game-changer in the logistics and agribusiness sector in Solomon Islands as no one has ever trialed such an initiative. This could be easily expanded to other high-value agricultural commodities once an efficient and viable system is evident from the pilot outcomes.

The project team has signed an MOU with Solomon Ports Authority to roll-out the pilot initiative.

LCL Project fact sheet

Prototype LCL app

Pilot LCL System

A pilot was rolled out from May 2021 to May 2022, which included:

Development and testing of an MVP digital product to facilitate less than container load collaboration between supply chain actors in the Solomon Islands – focused on one commodity (cocoa), one medium (shipping containers), and consolidators/exporters as users
Shipping the first container to the premium UK cocoa market using this digital product through Solomon Islands’ main port in Honiara
Marketing (local and abroad)
Training and awareness raising with Solomon Island agricultural supply chain actors (online and on-the-ground)
Collaboration with stakeholders (SIG, donors, multi-stakeholder partners, etc)

The pilot proved the success of the model in the premium cocoa sector through the testing phase of the MVP.

Building LCL V2.0

With the successful pilot completed, UAG and its partners are now working to build V2.0 of the LCL product, and evolve the project towards a viable commercial Pacific enterprise.

LCL v2.0 will build on the prototype that assists Solomon Island cocoa consolidators and exporters to share shipping containers and access export markets via Honiara to:

Accommodate any agricultural commodities from the Pacific (i.e. coconuts, coffee, ngali nut)
Enable sharing of any type of freight space (i.e. trucks, air shipping crates)
Facilitate trade through any location inside and outside Solomon Islands (i.e. Noro, Lae)
Involve additional users across the supply chain (i.e. farmers & producers, buyers, freight forwarders)

Achieving these outcomes will require further investment in technology development, expansion of partnerships in new geographical locations, and a team to engage with and support actors across agricultural supply chains.

At this early stage, LCL is still proving itself and exploring various business models for its own financial sustainability. This next iteration of LCL will specifically test commercial models with users and those who benefit from its application. Insights will inform business model design for V3.0 and beyond.

Tugeda

Every building is a classroom

Tugeda connects building owners with people providing education and training throughout the Solomon Islands. An idea conceived at the Pacific Connect Network Dialogue on Education (Honiara, November 2018), Tugeda makes it possible to expand access to early childhood education, secdondary school, TVET and tertiary education by harnessing underutilised capacity in existing infrastructure and to provide essential educational infrastructure to existing buildings to better function as digital learning environments. Through the Tugeda app, you can view photos of the spaces you like, understand what facilities are available, confirm accessibility requirements and contact the owners.

The Tugeda team received the ‘Australia Solomon Islands Technology for Development Challenge’ award, with the project now being delivered through Cyber Cooperation Program by Common Code, a Pacific Connect partner.

Access the Tugeda website

Pacific Tech Academy

Accelerating the development of digital skills knowledge

ICDP, through the Pacific Connect program, is teaming up with Common Code to implement the Pacific Tech Academy. The Academy aims to accelerate the development of Pacific technology and digital skills, jobs, products and businesses by:

delivering education, training, mentoring, coaching and internships in software development, digital product management and strategy, digital transformation and founding tech startups; and
providing and connecting participants with local and Pacific-wide communities of practice, hands-on project work, and employment in the industry.

The Pacific Tech Academy’s workshops and mentoring sessions on coding and e-Commerce are available on our intuitive learning portal.

Pacific Tech Academy Fact Sheet

Soil Health

Digitalisation of soil health and organic integration

Helping farmers, particularly female farmers as empowered economic agents, to improve their soil health presents significant opportunities for the regions’ economic development. Utilising increased soil health data can lead to greater financial security for Fiji, as well as increased sustainable yields and reduced input costs.

The project team and Fung’s Farm are developing an app to help farmers understand the contents of their soil for better decision making and profitability. Through involvement with Pacific Connect, they’ve teamed up with Australian business, Common Code, to develop a subsistence Soil Health Monitor App. The project team is engaging in research and data gathering, with nearly 90% of stakeholder farmers involved in the pilot being women, in line with Sustainable Development Goal #5.

View the project flyer.

Yumi Wan

Supporting Ni-Vanuatu women in business

Yumi Wan Business Advisory Group provides a safe and open forum for women business owners to share ideas, challenges and solutions within the group to develop confidence, and help businesses improve operations, implement ideas and grow. The idea, formed during the Pacific Connect Vanuatu Dialogue (July, 2019) has seen participants establish a Facebook group and held capacity building / networking events with support from Digicel Vanuatu.

Research is being undertaken to explore more support services for its members.

Access the group (Facebook login and administrator approval required)

Pacific Finds

Empowering Pacific business through eCommerce

Pacific Finds is an eCommerce platform created specifically to help micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), with a strong focus on women entrepreneurs, to effectively promote their business and sell their products online. The eCommerce solution showcases authentic Pacific Island products and services through digital storytelling, connecting shoppers to the hardworking individuals and community groups behind every product.

An idea developed by Founder, Pauline Benson, before attending Pacific Connect Dialogues in Brisbane (June 2019) and Port Vila (July 2019), Pacific Finds has grown in scale since being connected with Australian award-winning social impact video production team Storyboxes and other Pacific growth enablers through the Pacific Connect network.

Check out their Facebook page and view the flyer.

Water Source Mapping

Better Water Resource Management in Solomon Islands

To tackle climate change at a community level, more holistic approaches and understandings which take into account multiple perspectives are needed. Scientific knowledge must be integrated and understood alongside traditional knowledge. For rural communities to effectively manage their water supply, all voices in the community must be taken into account, including women who have a strong role to play in the management of water and food security.

The project will develop an online application ‘tool’ to enable public mapping of water resources and increase access to and sharing of information related to water resources across Solomon Islands. The tool will provide an avenue for a ‘citizens voice’, with a targeted emphasis on youth, to provide information to ensure good water resources management.

DELIVERED

Mobile Me

Using technology to empower people with disability

“How do we improve accessibility and lifestyles for people with disability in Fiji?” This question, asked at the Pacific Connect Dialogue on Assistive Technology (July 2019, Fiji) sparked an innovative collaborative project between Australian and Pacific Islander technology, business and disability leaders. After months of
collaboration and planning, the Mobile Me Project was provided financial support ICDP (ICDP) for the development of amobile app to collect accessibility data by Australian technology company Common Code.

On International Day of People with Disability (2019), the Mobile Me Team launched Phase 1 of the project via a coordinated, street-level data collection (mapathon) in the Suva business district. Over 100 volunteers collected more than 300 pieces of data using the easy-to-use mobile app that stores the type, location and description of infrastructure.

Mobile Me fact sheet

Interested in working on a project? Contact us here.

PROJECTS

PROJECTS

ACTIVE

DELIVERED

Contact

Street Address

Follow Us