ASSESS- Community and Local Economy Impact

This section helps you shape your Grassroots idea to empower local people, communities, and businesses, supporting growth and prosperity for everyone. You’ll discover how to enhance your community’s well-being and contribute to the local economy by applying eco-health practices that empower individuals and businesses. Through interactive activities and practical tools, you’ll explore how your project can create opportunities, boost small businesses, and build a vibrant marketplace. Learn how to design ideas that bring value, uplift individuals, and help companies to thrive in the long term. By the end, you’ll be ready to take meaningful steps to strengthen your community and create lasting connections to your idea as it evolves!

How this Works! 4 Steps

Explore the tools, questions, and resources provided to assess how your idea can support and positively impact your local community and economy:

1THINK with Questions

Download the questions to help you think about ways your idea can uplift the local community, support businesses, and boost the economy. Each question has exercises and prompts to evaluate your idea’s potential and impact.

2WATCH the Videos

Watch expert videos to help you create eco-health ideas that empower communities, strengthen local economies, and drive positive, lasting change

3TRY the Ideas

 Try these ideas to shape your eco-health project into a force for community and economic growth, promoting local well-being and sustainability.

4USE the Toolbox

Use these digital tools to bring your idea to life while supporting local businesses and communities. Track your progress and ensure long-term impact for a thriving local economy.

Step 1: THINK with Questions

Think about how your idea can uplift local communities, support businesses, and strengthen the economy. Download these questions; each question features practical exercises and prompts to help you evaluate your idea’s potential and maximise its impact.

Q. How can your idea contribute to building a stronger, more connected community?

Exercise: Think about how your idea could help bring people together.

  • Spot the Connections: Write down ways your project can help connect people, like organizing events or building new social networks.
  • Get to Know Your Neighbors: Research local groups and events where your project could make a difference.

Plan to Engage: Think of two ways to engage the community in your project, like offering collaboration opportunities or starting a volunteer program.

Step 2: WATCH the Videos

Watch these expert videos illustrating how eco-friendly initiatives can empower communities and stimulate local economies. These resources will help you envision the broader benefits of your idea and guide you in turning it into a reality.

Description

This video Sumesh Mangalasseri, founder of Kabani Tours, is a pioneer in sustainable tourism, emphasising community-driven approaches that protect the environment while enabling socio-economic growth. Inspired by his experiences with local communities, he developed a framework promoting responsible tourism, ensuring livelihood enhancement and ecological balance. Rejecting the corporate world’s unsustainable practices, Sumesh integrates his deep connection to nature into his ventures, offering tourists an authentic experience rooted in local culture and natural beauty.

Step 3: TRY the Ideas

Try these innovative Ideas and digital tools to inspire and shape your eco-health idea. Gain insights on successfully implementing sustainable eco-health initiatives, strengthening local businesses, and building community connections. Learn how to create businesses that drive economic growth and enhance social well-being.

Step 4: USE the Toolbox

Mapillary

Mapillary is a crowdsourced mapping platform that enables users to capture and share street-level imagery.

GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs can, for example, document public art, murals, and cultural landmarks. Through geotagged photos and user contributions, Mapillary can create interactive maps of local art installations, enhancing the visibility of community-driven projects. This tool helps entrepreneurs promote local culture and boost tourism, strengthening the local economy through art and cultural appreciation.

Mural

Mural is a digital collaboration tool that allows creative teams to brainstorm, design, and plan projects visually in real-time.

Can help GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs organise and manage community-based eco-health projects in real time. Perfect for initiatives such as eco-tourism, street art, sports, wellbeing, culture, and heritage. Mural offers features like sticky notes, templates, and flexible workspaces that make it easy to brainstorm, visualise, and track project progress. Entrepreneurs can collaborate seamlessly with community partners, driving engagement and supporting local eco-health-aligned businesses, which contributes to regional economic growth. By raising awareness about eco-health initiatives, Mural strengthens local tourism, stimulates economic development, and builds stronger community ties.

AirTable

AirTable: is a flexible project management and database platform that allows users to track and manage multiple aspects of their projects.

It empowers GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs to organise and streamline their community-driven initiatives. It provides customisable workflows and a visually intuitive interface, making it easy to organise local businesses, artisans, workshops, and tour itineraries in one centralised place. Entrepreneurs can efficiently handle contacts, bookings, schedules, and local partnerships, ensuring seamless operations and better coordination. The tool helps aligning their operations with sustainability goals, creating seamless eco-health events that benefit both the community and their business. AirTable’s flexibility supports local economic growth by enabling businesses to track and nurture connections with local businesses, communities and partners strengthening the impact of their eco-tourism projects.

JotForm

JotForm: JotForm is a user-friendly form and survey builder that simplifies collecting information for various food-related activities, including vendor applications, customer orders, and event feedback.

For GRASSROOTS initiatives, it’s a valuable tool for gathering participant feedback after sustainable food events like farm-to-table dining or eco-friendly food festivals. It also helps with vendor applications for local markets and pre-order forms for eco-conscious food services, ensuring efficient planning and logistics. With customiSable forms that can be embedded or shared directly, JotForm is a flexible solution for any eco-health-focused food initiative.

FoodStory

FoodStory is a platform that helps food vendors manage orders and payments efficiently, making it especially useful for pop-up events, street food community vendors, and food-related activities in eco-health tourism.

For GRASSROOTS ideas, FoodStory is a valuable tool for organising food-related pop-ups or events such as eco-friendly street food festivals or sustainable dining experiences like farm-to-table initiatives. It simplifies order tracking, payment processing, and customer engagement, allowing vendors to optimise their operations and offer a seamless experience. The platform enables vendors to offer QR code menus, member discounts, and track personal consumption while rewarding customers with loyalty points or coupons. These features not only enhance customer engagement but also align with sustainability goals, providing a convenient, eco-conscious way to manage food service operations. By using FoodStory, vendors can streamline their financial processes and create impactful, community-focused food experiences that promote both local economies and environmental sustainability.

TeamUp

TeamUp is an event scheduling and management platform that simplifies organising business or community clinics, classes, and events.

For GRASSROOTS ideas, TeamUp is ideal for coordinating youth sports clinics, outdoor fitness sessions, eco-sports events, or community-focused activities like nature hikes or environmental awareness tournaments. The platform makes it easy to manage scheduling, sign-ups, and communication with participants, ensuring smooth logistics and streamlined event coordination. TeamUp also provides customisable features for tracking attendance, managing teams, and coordinating groups, which is essential for eco-friendly sporting events. By using TeamUp, entrepreneurs can effectively organise events that engage youth, and promote environmental sustainability, local businesses and community involvement in eco-tourism initiatives.

Strava

Strava is a popular fitness app that allows users to log and track physical activities such as running, cycling, and hiking.

An excellent tool for promoting, organising, and tracking eco-friendly sports events like beach clean-up runs, charity bike rides, or nature hikes. GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs can leverage Strava to promote community-wide events, monitor participation, create engaging challenges, and promote sustainable activities. Participants can log their activities, share achievements, and contribute to environmental causes, increasing visibility and awareness for eco-tourism initiatives. The app also enables a social community of like-minded individuals passionate about both health and sustainability. By using Strava, entrepreneurs and event organisers can enhance community wellbeing via their involvement, support local businesses, and strengthen the local economy while promoting eco-friendly, health-conscious activities.

Komoot

Komoot: is a GPS navigation and route mapping app that helps design eco-tours through natural landscapes, ensuring a seamless and sustainable experience for participants.

It enables GRASSROOTS eco-health tourism entrepreneurs to create custom routes that highlight local trails, parks, forests, and natural areas, as well as key eco-friendly destinations like organic cafes, eco-lodges, and conservation projects. The app allows entrepreneurs to easily share these routes with participants, ensuring they have all the information needed for a smooth and environmentally conscious journey. Komoot’s real-time navigation and tracking features ensure visitor safety while minimising their environmental footprint. It is an essential tool for mapping detailed routes, guiding participants through eco-tourism destinations, supporting the growth of eco-friendly businesses and minimising social impact. By using Komoot, entrepreneurs and communities can enhance the visitor experience, promote local sustainability, and showcase the beauty of natural ecosystems.

Skillshare

Skillshare is an online learning platform and community offering access to thousands of classes across a wide range of creative and digital skills, such as illustration, design, photography, video production, coding, web design, and social media marketing.

The platform provides GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs with the tools to develop practical skills in areas like digital entrepreneurship, coding, and content creation, enabling them to thrive in a digital-first world. GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs can access workshops, offering the opportunity to gain skills essential for future success in eco-health and digital ventures. Young entrepreneurs can use the platform to develop technical and creative abilities, such as digital marketing, content development, and project management. By enhancing their skills, they can build a strong foundation for their eco-health initiatives, helping them create innovative solutions for sustainable communities and local economies, environmental conservation, and digital entrepreneurship.

Miro

Miro is an online collaboration platform designed to empower GRASSROOTS eco-health tourism teams to innovate, plan, and build projects together.

For GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs, Miro is the perfect tool to brainstorm community ideas, develop sustainable tourism and economy initiatives, and streamline project workflows. It has features such as video chat, real-time collaboration, and interactive presentations, Miro makes it easy to organise meetings and workshops, ensuring teams stay aligned and productive. It enhances collaboration by enabling team members to contribute simultaneously to a digital space, making it easier to refine concepts, share feedback, and move projects forward. This platform helps drive eco-health and tourism ventures by enabling a creative, efficient, and connected environment, empowering teams to build impactful, sustainable projects.

Discord

Discord is a powerful communication platform that offers text, voice, and video channels for real-time interaction, making it ideal for community-building and collaboration.

This tool enables entrepreneurs to strengthen relationships, share insights, and build a supportive network around their eco-friendly ventures. GRASSROOTS eco-health tourism entrepreneurs can create both private and public servers to engage with customers, communities, partners, and like-minded individuals, all while building a thriving, engaged community. With features for seamless communication, event hosting, and knowledge-sharing, Discord helps users connect dynamically and engage their audience in meaningful ways, creating a collaborative space for eco-health business growth and impact.

Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks is a versatile community platform that offers tools for creating private, branded spaces where members can connect, share content, and collaborate.

It allows GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs to build customised communities and branded spaces with features like discussion forums, online courses, and event hosting. The platform supports membership management, enabling eco-health entrepreneurs to engage directly with their audience, build loyalty, and grow and monetise their offerings. Members can collaborate and share content with other like-minded individuals and communities e.g. on sustainability topics or eco-health issues. Hosts can create a dedicated network focused on sustainable entrepreneurship practices, enabling entrepreneurs to engage directly with their audience and communities, have honest and meaningful discussions, come up with solutions and grow a loyal following around their eco-friendly ventures. Mighty Networks provides the tools to connect, collaborate, and grow a dedicated following around eco-friendly ventures.

Restor

Restor is an innovative platform designed to connect and support initiatives focused on environmental restoration, management and community enhancement.

Through Restor, GRASSROOTS entrepreneurs can document and showcase their ecological efforts, whether related to gardening, farming, or broader land restoration projects. The platform offers tools to track progress, visualise outcomes, and share data on environmental impact, making it easier to engage with like-minded businesses, support organisations and communities. Restor promotes regenerative practices and facilitates collaboration between eco-tourism businesses and environmental conservation groups.

For GRASSROOTS eco-health tourism entrepreneurs, Restor provides a powerful tool for promoting their environmental efforts and engaging with communities committed to nature preservation. By using the platform, entrepreneurs can highlight their projects—such as eco-tourism routes or conservation areas—and connect with other stakeholders involved in the regenerative use of land. This enables them to create a stronger impact on environmental and social sustainability, raise awareness about their initiatives, and enable collaboration in the field of eco-health tourism.

Inner Development Goals Toolkit (IDG) Toolkit

Inner Development Goals Toolkit (IDG) Toolkit is an innovative resource designed to nurture the inner skills necessary for achieving sustainable development.

For GRASSROOTS ideas the IDG Toolkit effectively bridges the gap between individual leadership and broader societal impact for GRASSROOTS youth. It provides structured tools, frameworks, and activities to facilitate essential personal and professional competencies, including self-awareness, resilience, critical thinking, collaboration, and impact-driven leadership. Young entrepreneurs are guided on how to align their personal growth with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while staying true to their core values. The toolkit is especially valuable for facilitating reflective practices, simplifying complex human development concepts, and nurturing values-driven decision-making. It empowers emerging leaders to make a positive, meaningful difference by aligning their projects with the SDGs and their personal values.  By using the toolkit, eco-entrepreneurs can build ventures that not only thrive but also create lasting change in environmental, health, societal, and economic challenges.