We created this innovation because too many young people and women in our region are excluded from meaningful participation in shaping their communities and futures. Traditional approaches often fail to provide the tools, spaces, and confidence they need to act. Creativity Lab was born to close this gap—using creativity, human-centered design, and experiential learning to unlock their potential, shift mindsets, and equip them with the courage and skills to lead change. Our goal is to transform exclusion into empowerment and ideas into lasting impact.
In practice, our innovation takes the form of hands-on labs, workshops, and community-driven projects where young people, women, and marginalized groups learn by doing. Using tools such as human-centered design, systems thinking, arts-based methods, co-creation, and simulation games, participants work together to identify real challenges in their communities and design creative, inclusive solutions.
For example, a lab might bring together youth and women from underserved neighborhoods to co-design campaigns for environmental awareness, develop inclusive educational games, or prototype green entrepreneurship projects. Each process is interactive, creative, and participatory, ensuring that participants are not passive recipients but active co-creators of change.
The result is a living ecosystem of skills, confidence, and community solutions that strengthen social participation, resilience, and innovation in everyday life.
Our innovation has been spreading through a network-based and multiplier approach. We started by training small groups of youth leaders, women change-makers, and local CSOs/CBOs, who then replicated the methods within their own communities. This “train-the-trainer” model allows ideas and practices to cascade from one community to another, reaching hundreds of beneficiaries indirectly.
We also leverage digital platforms, partnerships, and regional collaborations to share toolkits, games, and co-creation methods beyond local contexts. By combining local ownership with cross-border exchange, our innovation has grown organically across Egypt, Palestine, and the wider MENA region, inspiring others to adapt and scale it within their own realities.
Our innovation has not remained static—it has evolved with every community we work with. Based on feedback from beneficiaries and partners, we have continuously refined and expanded it in several ways:
Context Adaptation: We tailored our methods to fit fragile and marginalized contexts, ensuring they are conflict-sensitive, gender-responsive, and inclusive of youth, women, and persons with disabilities.
Tool Integration: We added arts-based therapy techniques, simulation games, and systems thinking to complement our original human-centered design approach, making the methods more engaging and practical.
Digital Transformation: To reach more people, we integrated digital platforms and online co-creation tools, enabling participation even when physical gatherings were not possible.
Scalability & Localization: We developed toolkits and training-of-trainers modules, allowing local organizations to adapt and scale the approaches independently.
Impact Measurement: We introduced community-led evaluation tools, so participants themselves can track and reflect on the changes they are driving.
This adaptability ensures that the innovation stays relevant, scalable, and resilient while deepening its impact over time.
You can start by using our practical toolkits and participatory methods—whether it’s human-centered design, simulation games, or creative arts approaches—to engage your own community. We provide step-by-step training guides, online resources, and mentoring to help you design and implement activities that foster social participation.
The best entry point is to join one of our capacity-building workshops or request a partnership pilot, where we work with you to adapt the tools to your local context. From there, you can apply the methods directly with youth, women, and marginalized groups, while we support you with coaching and evaluation.
