CO:LAB is a social innovative programme that, through engagement with the UN SDGs, develops and implements design-thinking processes as learning tools in order to improve business skills and human capital together with young refugees. CO:LAB therefore seeks to ensure greater educational and labour orientated prospects for displaced people in Denmark by fostering entrepreneurial and innovative activities that to a higher degree can contribute towards economic inclusion, better employment opportunities and a more diverse skilled workforce. Participants in CO:LAB will develop skills such as; problem-solving, leading and managing innovation processes, collaboration

Over a period of four months participants will be introduced to methods of ideation, concept development, prototyping, iteration and pitching, sales and marketing through four independent workshops. Each workshop will touch upon specific phases of the Design-Thinking process and be connected through a key problem that needs to be solved; such problem will take the shape of a real-life business case that is developed in collaboration with a Danish firm. Furthermore, every workshop will be facilitated by Design-Thinking experts from various Danish as well as multinational firm, which is done in order to facilitate and cultivate strategic touch-points between refugees and the business sector. It is the ambition that through participation, CO:LAB's stakeholders will acquire the necessary problem-solving, business and innovating skills for catalysing a more dignified living condition through several areas. These are: 1) the materialisation of better and more diverse employment opportunities, 2) improvements in social and human capital, 3) being able to start businesses.

The Danish Refugee Council, Roskildefonden, young refugees, Danish and multinational companies