Social impact

Originally coming from psychology, the term came to be applied in other contexts, with the idea that impacts are the results of actions taken by people, organizations, companies, governments, groups, or institutions that can affect a community.

As actions, we understand programs, activities, and projects that generate deliberate or unintentional results, with both positive and negative effects, and that can be felt or experienced by people from a certain community or territory. However, companies, governments, and organizations started to use the term to refer to positive changes for society, with strong effects on the mitigation of social or local challenges.

Often complex to identify, the social impact should ideally be measured or evaluated: how does a particular solution, action, or initiative help to transform a given reality? What are the actual or estimated short, medium, and long-term effects? What indicators support these findings? These are some of the questions used by those seeking to assess the social impact of a given issue or activity.

Social impact: putting the project in the world

Samsung Solve for Tomorrow encourages students and teachers to reflect on the potential impacts of their proposals, empirically test their results, and discuss their findings and discoveries with their communities or with those who would potentially benefit from the action developed, strengthening a culture of transparency and dialogue evaluation between those involved.