Active Citizenship and inclusive Smart Communities, with Andrew Funk

In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have a great chat with Andrew Funk, international keynote speaker and Impact Activist for homeless people. Andrew believes that work and active citizenship will end homelessness for and with those willing to participate in the process, which is why he created a model to end homelessness that embraces the concept of Smart Cities becoming even Smarter. In this episode, Andrew and I discuss his background from teaching English through to a digital consultancy, and the very personal story of how he started Homeless Entrepreneur. Andrew tells us about the steps he took to get out of homelessness and why inclusive Smart Communities full of active citizens are so important. He tells us how he sees Spain embracing Smart concepts, and about the projects he's working on included Homeless Entrepreneur and Afloat. We then discuss the importance of including people who are affected by the problems you're trying to solve so as to avoid tokenistic approaches, and the three strategic pillars of how to do that: knowledge, recognition and change. We finish our chat talking about the emerging trends of bottom up solutions and citizens taking more of an active role in Smart Cities. As always we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it. Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter @andrewfunkspain or via WhatsApp +34 697 877 089 Connect with me via email: [email protected] Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.