MEDWAYCAP first Innovation Camp in Tunisia: an entrepreneurial discovery process for paving the way for effective integration of the Non-Conventional Water resource

The Center for Water Research and Technologies (CERTE, Tunisia) in synergy with the International Center for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies - Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari - CIHEAM Bari (Italy) with the support of the Euro-Mediterranean center for the Sustainable Development SVI.MED (Italy), partners of MEDWAYCAP, are organising the first Mediterranean Innovation Camp and is calling the MEDWAYCAP partners and associate partners, further than partners from the capitalized projects, such as NAWAMED and MENAWARA, to pool their expertise motivated by the burning need to achieve tangible results/solutions for Non-Conventional Water resource (NCWR) valorisation. 

The event is the result of a long preparatory work developed during the 2022, for identifying the more useful methodology tailored on the MEDWAYCAP’s objectives, thus for jointly drafting the challenges to be faced at Mediterranean level, according to the project’s aim, thus to foster the NCWR integration into the water governance system and related business opportunities in the context of the circular economy.

In the occasion of this first Innovation camp in Tunisia, the challenge has been adjusted to be more consistent to the Tunisian national needs, with the aim to leave tangible results (prototypes) at the end of the two days of co-designing.

The Innovation Camp, in fact, is a condensed process in which economic, social, technological, cultural and environmental challenges can be addressed at policy, strategy and/or operational levels, and how they can be tackled and ‘solved’ innovatively by the four major actors in the innovation system: science, policy, industry, and society (denominated Quadruple Helix stakeholders) with the support of experts. 

About 40 stakeholders, with different roles (challenge owners, prototype holders, rapporteurs etc) coming from 8 Mediterranean countries will be actively involved to reframe and analyses the identify challenges, co-designing solutions/prototypes in three parallel sessions during the 7th and 8th of February! Guidelines has been supplied to all participants to be ready for this challenge between the challenges, with information about the problems, opportunities and a description about the challenges.  

The innovation camp will benefit from a creative and innovative environment created by the setting up of the "MEDWAYCAP&NAWAMED Joint International event" which will bring together multidisciplinary and multi-level experts in one space. 

On of the first common appointment is the NAWAMED Conference and "MEDWAYCAP EXHIBITION" vernissage the 6th February afternoon, bringing together all the participants of the innovation camp in to know better each other and discover the proposed solutions on the tackled issues.  

The second innovation camp will be organized in Amman (Jordan) the first week of May 2023.