InSTEDD iLab Southeast Asia

The iLab is a space for innovation, research, and consultancy with a focus on collaborative technologies for humanitarian purposes. InSTEDD, in partnership with Google.org, launched the first iLab located in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2007. The goal was to help the social and technical sides of the humanitarian sector come together to collaborate on health, safety and development issues affecting the Mekong Basin regions. At the iLab Southeast Asia solutions are developed and evolved in the field. Our team designs and uses context-appropriate tools to help our partners overcome obstacles that hinder collaboration, allowing them to work more effectively to improve health, safety, and development. We work side-by-side with our partners in their communities throughout the process of design, implementation, and evaluation. Our team works collaboratively to invent new technologies, adapt existing tools to the local context, provide training and support, and evaluate outcomes in a cycle of continuous improvement. By building local capacity, we help to ensure that the systems created are more relevant than when introduced by outsiders, and that necessary innovation will continue beyond the life of a single project.