Skoll World Forum attendees talk in front of Solutions Insights Lab posters

Solutions Insights Lab

The Solutions Insights Lab is informed by SJN’s interest in identifying and interrogating what’s working — and what’s not — in a specific sector or field and supporting research and dialogue to advance problem-solving knowledge for a point of inquiry.

The Solutions Insights Lab brings the elements of solutions reporting regularly used by journalists to philanthropists, policymakers and change agents to support promising responses to the world’s most pressing problems so that we can engage, share, and shine a light on these ideas and models.

We are interested in utilizing the tenets of solutions journalism across the scope of issue areas that matter to philanthropists, policymakers and change agents. The Insights Lab focuses on pulling out key trends and patterns; presenting them through new digital products; and then deploying a strategic plan of engagement to reach specific audiences.

This work connects SJN’s network of journalists to other organizations’ key changemakers, and a knowledge exchange happens that will advance the mission of SJN and a storytelling for impact approach with new networks.

 

Solutions Insights Lab logo

Our vision is to integrate a solutions framework in societal narratives, inspire the spread of innovative solutions in media coverage, and provide insights through doing firsthand interviews and applying them to action.

These elements include:

The Response

Focuses on a response to a social problem — and on how that response has worked, or why it hasn’t.

Insight

Shows what can be learned from a response and why it matters.

Evidence

Provides data or qualitative results that indicate effectiveness (or lack thereof).

Limitations

Places responses in context; doesn’t shy away from revealing shortcomings.
Screenshot of articles about social change makers

Skoll Foundation Partnership

Recently, Solutions Insights Lab partnered with the Skoll Foundation to create a website of solutions stories and curated interviews. The result: a website where you can search across sectors, regions and key topics to learn about efforts to solve social problems. The goal is to engage, inspire and empower people to better address social challenges.

This is not a work of journalism. The interviewing approach has been standardized, and the individuals interviewed were specifically selected as part of a project supported by the Skoll Foundation to learn from its 20 years of work supporting practitioners of social change. SJN seeks to better understand how the solutions journalism approach can be deployed or adapted to support learning. The interviews included here do not represent any form of endorsement by SJN, which is an independent, nonpartisan organization that does not advocate any particular approach to social change.