It is not every day that more than one hundred people from such diverse backgrounds and professional trajectories come together at an event like the EFI Mediterranean Network Forum. Alongside keynote presentations and networking opportunities, the organisers wanted to ensure that all participants played an active role, sharing their knowledge, experience, and opinions rather than remaining passive listeners.
This ambition led to the design of a solution co‑creation workshop, which we referred to as a hackathon. Despite the name, it had nothing to do with programming and was carried out entirely using analogue methods. The objective was to harness collective intelligence to generate concrete and transferable solutions for some of the Mediterranean region’s most pressing challenges.
EFI identified eight challenges in total, six related to carob value chains and two focused on watershed management. Participants were invited to choose two challenges of their interest and work on them during two separate 90‑minute sessions. Each challenge was supported by a subject‑matter expert, ensuring that discussions were grounded in up‑to‑date knowledge and practical experience.
From shared context to collective ideas
Each session began with a short presentation on the current Mediterranean context delivered by one of the experts. This helped establish a shared baseline of understanding among participants from different countries and sectors. Participants then split into groups according to their chosen challenge, which the expert presented in more detail. All challenges were designed to be pan‑Mediterranean, allowing everyone to contribute meaningfully and ensuring that potential solutions could be applied across several countries. Each challenge was ultimately framed as a single guiding question.
Groups then worked through an OPERA process, facilitated by a moderator and supported by a rapporteur. This structured participatory method helped focus the group’s energy, collect ideas from everyone involved and progressively filter, prioritise and synthesise proposals. Participants wrote their ideas on Post‑it notes, which were placed on a large paper canvas and grouped into thematic clusters. They were encouraged to consider technical, financial, and governance aspects to ensure that solutions were both realistic and implementable.
Bridging dialogue and action
After the first session, participants enjoyed a well‑deserved coffee break before returning to work on a second challenge. By the end of an intensive morning, each group had produced a rich and structured set of proposed solutions. The final step now rests with the facilitators and rapporteurs, who will compile the results into a concise report and share it with the relevant stakeholders. These stakeholders will be responsible for further developing and implementing the ideas generated during the hackathon.
This experience showed that, with the right structure and facilitation, large and diverse groups can move beyond discussion to genuine co‑creation. For EFI and its partners, the workshop offered a concrete example of how participatory approaches can transform dialogue into a foundation for action across the Mediterranean.
