Peruvian IDEAthon promotes innovative solutions to key issues

As part of the launch of International IDEA’s flagship publication, The Global State of Democracy: Exploring the resilience of Democracy  in Lima, Peru, participants took part in an IDEAthon on 20 November 2017.

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An IDEAthon is as an interdisciplinary laboratory to identify project ideas and innovative solutions to identified topics, in light of the findings of the publication. Tailored to the Peruvian political context, the topics of the IDEAthon were money, political influence and corruption; gender inequalities; and the challenges of political parties and representation.

Split into three small groups, each addressing a different topic, participants included politicians, journalists, scholars, young influencers in social networks, policymakers and researchers. Notable participants included former ministers of different governments such as Nidia Vílchez, Marcela Huita, Cecilia Blondet and Javier Barreda, as well as representatives of business associations, including Jorge Medina of the National Confederation of Private Business Institutions and representatives of civil society organizations, such as the platform Comadres.

Not only was the IDEAthon a creative way to present the publication, it also promoted dialogue, discussion and understanding among different stakeholders with diverse points of view.

After a long working afternoon, the IDEAthon groups produced a series of concrete ideas, which may serve as the foundations for future projects related to each topic. These included:

• “Dime en que gastas” (Tell me what you spend), aimed at putting pressure on political parties to report on how they spend the public resources they receive for actions to close gender gaps.
• “Abrir la cancha” (Opening up the playing field), starting a political discussion about specific topics with grassroots organizations, i.e. “democratizing” the political discussion with organized social stakeholders.
• Generate campaigns to disseminate information on the rights of women facing labor or social discrimination.
• A campaign to empower citizens, aimed at fighting against corruption through citizen education.

The event, hosted by the Country Club Hotel in Lima, Peru, was part of a series of IDEAthons and high-level launches in locations around the world (learn more). The ideas generated at each event will be published on our website.