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Design Blog Design Blog » Design for the Other 90%

Out of Poverty

Out of Poverty

International Development Enterprises’ founder Paul Polak has just released his much anticipated book Out of Poverty, What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail. Based on his 25 years of experience he tells why traditional poverty eradication programs have fallen short and how his alternative approach works. Paul’s work and dedication to developing practical design solutions that attack poverty at its roots was the inspiration for the Design for the Other 90% exhibition. He works in co-creation with thousands of farmers in Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe to design and produce low-cost, income-generating products that have helped 17 million people emerge out of poverty. His pioneering alternative approach serves as a successful model of what is possible.

The book has met with favourable reviews from the Economist, Business Week and the International Herald Tribune. In the coming months Paul will be discussing both his new book and the start of a design revolution in a series of public lectures.

Voûte Nubienne Affordable Housing

Voûte Nubienne Affordable Housing

In sub-Saharan Africa, traditional building techniques are no longer feasible; due to increased deforestation use of timber for roofing and posts is not viable. Adapting an ancient architectural technique used in Sudan and Asia to West Africa, provides an affordable alternative. The Voute Nubienne (VN) or Nubian Vault technique uses local materials (mud bricks dried in the sun) and local labor to construct low cost vaulted roofs. Earth roofs in the Sahel, a program of the Association La Voûte Nubienne, is providing communities with a practical option to building with imported metal sheet roofing materials and expensive timber. The first VN building was built in Burkina Faso 10 years ago. Since then over 340 vaults have been built, 60 VN builders have been trained and are setting themselves up as local entrepreneurs, and 100 apprentices are undergoing training on VN building sites. The method has spread from Burkina Faso to Mali, Senegal, Togo and Ivory Coast.

Virtual Emergency Network


Istanbul

The first solar powered StarSight virtual utility poles were installed in Istanbul, Turkey four months ago. The poles will provide a communication and emergency network in case of a large disaster (such as an earthquake) with a full Wi-Fi CCTV network attached to a lamppost. The first five poles include internet access, one mobile unit in a police car, a CCTV network and three LED streetlights, and is part of a larger planned project to cover the whole city. The emergency network will have wireless broadband access with video and VoIP functions and 70,000 streetlights to be implemented now till 2011. In November more StarSight units will be installed in Martinique and the Cote d’Ivoire.

Innovation, Deviance and Design


Nutrition in Bolivia Positive Deviance Study
Nutrition in Bolivia Positive Deviance Study

In this growing area of design innovations are evident in numerous forms. Not limited to current technologies these designers sample from current, emerging and out-moded technologies to provide low cost effective solutions to benefit the poor and marginalized. Working across disciplines and sectors they partner in innovative ways. They create virtual design teams to harness the talents of various disciplines or look to challenge and influence the current market. Engineers, software developers, industrial designers and governments are engaged to collapse the literacy divide in developing countries. New models for enhancing innovation being developed. Rockefeller Foundation’s Innovation Initiative looks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the process of innovation for poor or vulnerable people, exploring various innovation models:

Open, or distributed, innovation is a relatively new innovation model that sources innovation resources from outside an institution. Crowdsourcing is one example of the open innovation model, exemplified by InnoCentive a web-based R&D solution provider that takes full advantage of global internet connectivity to link “Seekers” of solutions with “Solver” scientists worldwide.

Positive Deviance unearths user-generated social and behavioral innovations. This change approach is based on the observation that in every community there are people whose uncommon practices enable them to find better solutions to prevalent problems than their neighbors who have access to the same resources.

Ashoka’s Changemakers combines two contradictory approaches – competition with open collaboration – for identifying and enhancing innovations. They conduct open social innovation ‘collaborative competitions’ on behalf of sponsors. Competition entries are posted transparently online and available for anyone to view and collaborate with by providing new ideas, asking questions, and providing connections to new resources.

Schools Lead

;Schools

A multitude of schools are at the forefront of devising low cost innovations around the world, these are only a few of the examples of initiatives and projects underway. Designmatters at Art Center College of Design develops a multi-component design solution for a mobile clinic in Kenya. A camel-packaging system improves efficiency, refrigeration units are solar-powered and a health education program provides culturally appropriate information for a nomadic people. A bike designer teams with the scientists and engineers from The Earth Institute at Columbia University on the Bamboo Bike Project to make bicycles out of bamboo. The goal is to build a sustainable form of transport for the rural poor in developing countries for improved access to the market, healthcare.

Harvard University’s SE Lab combines academic theory, research and field work with peer support and the participation of experts and practitioners. Inspired by the work of pioneers in the field like Ashoka’s Bill Drayton and the founder of Grameen bank, Muhammad Yunus, it is a laboratory workshop where student teams create and develop plans for US and international social entrepreneurship initiatives. MIT’s D Lab prepares students to respond to the basic needs of communities in developing nations with inexpensive, ecologically sustainable and easily adaptable technological solutions. Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable/Social Enterprise links the social entrepreneur with designers.

Norway’s Design without Borders partners with Guatemala’s Universidad Rafael Landívar and Uganda’s Makerere University. These teams work with local organizations on product development aimed at critical situations like war or natural disaster and on long-term development with emphasis on environmental and social issues.