Science for Change

Science for Change (SfC) is a SME born from the will to tackle societal challenges affecting communities using innovative solutions. SfC specializes in developing user-centered, innovative services and products based on citizen science, participatory strategies, community engagement and co-creation processes to facilitate social innovation. It focuses on environmental issues affecting citizens, or any other matters of concern, and uses a methodology based on a quadruple helix model of stakeholder engagement (public authorities and policy makers, industries and SMEs, academia, and communities, NGOs and CSOs, amongst others), to promote dialogue, increase transparency, and to co-design innovative solutions that are relevant to all the stakeholders involved. The identified stakeholders are involved in every step of the process: from the co-design of the research question, to the definition and the data gathering strategy, to its validation, analysis and co-design of solutions. Through data gathering and its analysis, new technologies and crowdsourcing, SfC empower communities using a bottom-up approach to co-design local solutions adapted to each local case, while promoting social innovation and the participation of citizens in decision-making processes that affect their quality of life. SfC has been created for the exploitation of results of the EU H2020 project D-NOSES (Distributed Network for Odour Sensing, Empowerment and Sustainability) with the aim of replicating the innovative methodology developed to co-design alternative solutions to odour pollution using citizen science and co-creation methodologies and a bottom-up approach. New products and services are offered to tackle environmental and social challenges using a highly inclusive participatory approach.