Thriving Environment
Community driven acceleration of innovators
Photo: Susan Alzner
Action-focused collaborations
shift7 collaborates with community leaders on initiatives that foster thriving environments, including in economically and socially inclusive development. This catalytic work, done together with partners, prioritizes ecosystem thinking and network connections to support innovative teams and leaders with models that can be scaled, shared, and locally adapted to accelerate the national or global transition to sustainability.
Our teamwork focuses on environmental justice and health, advancing renewable energy, inclusive innovation, and related entrepreneurship and arts. Youth engagement and cross-discipline approaches are central in much of this work.
shift7 co-founded and co-presents the MIT Solve Indigenous Communities Fellowship.
Annually for five years now, the Fellowship has launched an open call for applications from Indigenous innovators in the US who build upon traditional knowledge and technology to meet the social, environmental, and economic goals of their communities.
Cohorts of 6 to 8 teams have been selected each year, and each fellow team is provided with a $10,000 grant and a year of mentorship from this MIT Solve community, which includes a growing group of advisors and partners.
First and foremost, Solve in collaboration with shift7 and our partners aim to establish a foundation of trust and partnership in the communities with which it works. Accordingly, each year the Fellowship theme selection is informed and co-led by the communities it intends to support, including via a Fellowship Leadership Group that is 75% Indigenous members.
Annual convenings and regular meetings are part of the Fellowship programming; these enable knowledge sharing and networking opportunities in line with the Indigenous innovators’ interests and welcome partners from all communities.
Early collaborators in 2018 included faculty mentors, innovation advisors, and additional community leaders. Gatherings focused on engaging acceleration partners to explore approaches for channeling resources (funding, mentors, partners, data sovereignty, and more).
Meet the ICF Finalists from 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and Oceti Sakowin founding Fellows 2018 (see also this 2018 article).
2018 Oceti Sakowin Energy Summit
In 2018 we collaborated on the Oceti Sakowin Energy Summit. This event held at Standing Rock was a major milestone on the path to founding the Indigenous Communities Fellowship at MIT Solve. shift7 leadership and partners from Nation of Makers met with colleagues in Standing Rock in August 2017 as an early exploration of collaboration options discussing innovation spaces and other solution making topics. In parallel, conversations began at MIT with Solve, PKG Center, faculty, students, shift7 team, and Phyllis Young of Standing Rock.
Solve and shift7 leadership then travelled together to Standing Rock in January 2018 to meet community members and leaders from Pine Ridge, Standing Rock, Flandreau, and Rosebud. We visited current and future sites of solar, geothermal, and wind energy.
As part of that January 2018 visit, we participated in the Inaugural Oceti Sakowin Energy Summit, hosted by Sitting Bull College and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe at the Prairie Knights Casino January 12-13. Conversations focused on the need for and barriers to having enough heat, electricity, food, and clean water in Native American communities, as well as existing projects that use traditional ancestral ways to create geothermal energy, food sovereignty, and solar farms.
Recognizing that progress will also require expanding broadband connectivity in Native American communities, shift7 joined in conversations with the team at Umoya Networks and other solution-makers to focus on creative approaches such as Tribal International Carrier (TIC), and continues to engage on this topic when requested. (More on connectivity at the bottom of the shift7 Economic Uplift programs page.)
