Frugal Innovation programme VOICE kicks off

The week of 8 June 2026 marked the official launch of VOICE*: Learning Globally, Acting Locally. The education programme was initiated by André Leliveld through his NKO Comenius Senior Fellowship and is now led by Madi Ditmars of the African Studies Centre Leiden, in close collaboration with the International Centre for Frugal Innovation. It brings together facilitators from eleven institutions across four partner countries, and forty participants from more than ten countries have signed up for the eight-week programme.

In his opening presentation, Peter Knorringa's final slide was blank. Not by accident: the conclusions, he said, should come from the participants themselves. It set the tone for a session that was as much conversation as presentation. Through breakout groups and open discussion, participants shared their own insights on frugal innovation and the frugal mindset, and the traditional distinction between teacher and student quickly faded. It was a first glimpse of what this programme is built on: exchange that moves in all directions, with no fixed hierarchy between teacher and student.

Conversations like this do not stop when the programme ends. VOICE is designed as a Community of Inquiry: a network that starts building now, and keeps growing as new people join and add their own context to the mix. Over the next seven weeks, participants will work in mixed international teams on themes ranging from frugal frameworks and grassroots design to frugal business models. Each week includes a flash ethnography: a structured conversation with people in their own environment, whose findings come back into the international group. The programme ends with a jointly written blog per team, published on the ICFI website.

The conversation has started. Seven weeks to go!

* VOICE stands for Virtual Online International Collaborative Exchange.