Centre for Civil Society and Governance, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
Urban encroachment and the blurring of urban/rural lines have contributed to the decline in ecosystems and their resources in peri-urban areas. This is occurring globally, driven by the capitalisation and commercialisation of food production or the belief that rapid urbanisation is the solution to endemic rural poverty. Social innovation, championed by change makers who contribute to sustaining long term engagement and responsible management of rural areas, are needed to provide sustainable futures. The local embeddedness of these actions, however, often make scaling such initiatives challenging, limiting their reach and impact.
This study examines the extent that different university-NGO partnerships can engage in collective action to scale and sustain environmental and social change at the peri-urban interface. We argue that universities can form different stakeholder partnerships to equip NGOs and community actors with resources, networks and structures to co-create rural revitalisation initiatives.
In this study, we compare two novel NGO/university collaborative partnerships for rural revitalisation initiatives. These are juxtaposed with a more conventional university-NGO collaboration for community-based action. The first novel case features an incubation-based approach, whereby the university acts as a social innovation incubator to co-create revitalisation programmes with a small NGO while growing the sustainability impact and capacity of the NGO. In the next case, the university works with other universities to form a regional knowledge and incubation platform. Together, they directly incubate the formation of innovative social enterprises and cross-sector collaborations to generate, replicate and translate social innovations to address rural issues.
By comparing the outcomes of these three programmes, through questionnaire data, interviews and observation records, we demonstrate the different ways that universities can partner and collaborate with the third sector in the sustained engagement, co-creation and dissemination of social innovations to address rural issues.
