UpLink crowdsourcing effort to accelerate progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

UpLink is an open digital platform for mass participation to accelerate progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to "crowdsource innovations" working to address "the world’s most pressing problems." It's a project of the World Economic Forum, Salesforce, Deloitte, Microsoft and LinkedIn.

UpLink enables the next generation of mission-driven entrepreneurs and young innovators to join forces with a trusted community of leading organisations, to deliver impact at scale.*So, what does that really mean?

You can use the site to:

• Learn about critical global issues and discover ways in which you can respond to humanity’s most pressing challenges.


• Share your perspective or submit a solution to a chosen challenge and get connected to a pool of experts and accelerators who are ready to help you scale your innovation.


• Review live UpLink contributions from inspiring entrepreneurs and change-makers, find out how they are having impact and what they need to scale further.


• Offer to collaborate to an "action group" or a "challenge" and, after a review and verification by the UpLink team, "you will be connected with a pool of experts and accelerators to collaborate and scale your idea."

It sounds a lot like the early days of NetSquared... 

From the web site:

How do I contribute to UpLink?

Here are a few tips and useful information to provide a great contribution:

Completeness: Don't worry if you don't have all the information we ask for, you can always figure them out later. But remember that the more you provide us information, the smother and easier the process will be for curators to review your contribution and for you to get "UpLinked"!

Navigation: you can jump from one screen to another with the navigation buttons or navigation steps. And as soon as you enter the minimum mandatory information, everything is saved every time you change the screen

Privacy: you can decide who can see what you are providing, by picking the desired Privacy Setting:

Public: everyone can see your contribution and start a conversation on it

Restricted: Only UpLink trusted and verified users can see your contribution fully, everyone else can see just a summary (title, picture and location)

Private: Only our UpLink curators can see the information, others won't know that you are giving your contribution

Process: So..what happens next?

As soon as you are ready, you can submit your contribution. UpLink curators will review it and come back to you with questions and will work with you to make it as complete as possible

When your contribution is ready to be scaled/enhanced/accelerated/adopted, you will become a trusted and verified UpLink user yourself and you will be "UpLinked" with pool of experts, accelerators, mentors, to collaborate!

In the unfortunate case that your contribution is not yet ready for this step, you will be notified and will able to submit it at a later stage again

You can always archive or withdraw your contribution during this process

Don't forget to submit your contribution as soon as you are ready!!! 

Check out our onboarding guide which provides guidelines and quick tips to ease your onboarding experience. 

Never calls this virtual volunteering but, indeed, that's what this is: a virtual volunteering initiative. 

If you sign up to participate and to contribute, please share in the comments here what the experience is like for you. I would just LOVE to see women, especially from the developing world, taking part in this initiative and offering their OWN solutions!