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Design for Social Innovation
A project-based initiative and course aimed at solving complex global problems through design
Design For Social Innovation (DFSI) is a project-based initiative where Columbia University students and faculty support social enterprises and nonprofit organizations to solve complex, ambiguous global problems through human-centered design. The initiative combines an interdisciplinary cohort of exceptional students, cutting edge research, design + passionate organizations to deliver a positive impact. The initiative is a collaboration between Columbia Entrepreneurship’s Design Studio and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).
- This a 3.0 credit course offered through SIPA and open to cross-registration from all Columbia Schools.
- A total of 24 students will be selected via an application and interview process.
- Students will apply for a specific project and will work in groups of four with their client.
- The Course will be held in the Design Studio on Wednesdays from 11:00am-12:50pm in the Spring.
Clients (details below):
- Aga Khan Foundation (Youth and Employment – Kyrgyzstan)
- Computer Science for ALL (K12 Ed Tech – US)
- General Assembly (Technology Training to Communities in Need – NYC)
- Harlem Children’s Zone (Harlem Communities – NYC)
- Mobdiun: Creative Youth (Youth and Deradicalization- Tunisia)
- Witness (Human Rights and Media – Global)
(All airfare and lodging will be covered by Columbia for students accepted to international projects)
Spring 2020 Clients
Aga Khan Foundation (Youth and Employment – Kyrgyzstan)
Challenge: How Might We Better Connect Youth to E-Commerce Opportunities in Kyrgyzstan?
Since 2002, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) has been supporting the establishment of institutions and programmes that help develop an economically dynamic, politically stable and intellectually and culturally vibrant Kyrgyz Republic. These include the main campus of the University of Central Asia in Naryn; the Osh School; the First MicroFinance Company; the Kyrgyz Investment Credit Bank; various initiatives supporting 310,000 people in the Osh and Naryn oblasts; and activities of the Aga Khan Music Initiative to support broad-based music and arts education.
Connect and retain talented Kyrgyz youth in the growing e-services sector. Columbia students will collaborate with the Aga Khan Foundation and the affiliated Mountain Societies Development Programme (MSDSP) to interview Kyrgyz youth and e-service leaders in Kyrgyzstan. Columbia students will also research current e-services trends in Kyrgyzstan and beyond. Based on the interviews and related research, Columbia students will articulate a number of challenges and opportunities. One primary goal will be to understand how students are or are not prepared for e-service jobs. Another major goal will be to understand how youth in Kyrgyzstan make decisions about what jobs they take and careers they pursue. Finally, Columbia students and their local partners will develop and test prototype solutions to these opportunities and challenges.
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Computer Science for ALL (K12 Ed Tech -NYC)
Challenge: Scaling K-12 Education Technology and CS Programming Across US — how might we expand reach without sacrificing quality?
Computer Science for All (CSforALL)’s mission is to make high-quality computer science an integral part of the educational experience of all K-12 students and teachers in the US and to support student pathways to college and career success.
CSforALL has supported some 150 school districts across the United States — primarily in urban areas. This programming includes consulting with district and state level teams to create state level plans for integrating CS education into K-12, thinking about lens of equity and serving “all” and maintaining rigor and high quality in the process. This requires significant support on the team at CSforALL. There is significant demand from districts across the US and globally but CSforALL’s capacity for response is challenged. How might they scale and reach every district that needs them without reducing quality of programming?
More Information on CSForALL’s District Support Programming: SCRIPT — the Strategic CSforALL Resource & Implementation Planning Tool — is a framework to guide teams of district administrators, school leaders, and educators through a series of collaborative visioning, self-assessment and goal-setting exercises to create or expand upon a computer science education implementation plan for their students. School districts and other local education organizations are the unit of change toward creating rigorous, inclusive and sustainable K-12 computer science education. The SCRIPT supports systems-level change by addressing five key areas: (1) Leadership, (2) Teacher Capacity and Development, (3) Curriculum and Materials Selection and Refinement, (4) Partners, and (5) Community.
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General Assembly (Technology Training to NYC Communities in Need)
Challenge: How might GA connect its most resource challenged students to public benefits and other resources that will support them on a trajectory towards job & economic security?
General Assembly (GA) is a technology company representing the future of work. It is a pioneer in education and career transformation, specializing in today’s most in-demand skills. GA has 20 offices in 6 countries and 35,000 alumni.
GA is launching a new program aimed at bridging the digital divide and ensuring that those left out of the digital revolution are fully integrated. Through an impact investment fund, GA will be able to provide access to its programming to communities in need — both those on public assistance and those coming out of the prison system (for non-violent offenses). GA is interested in working with a team of students to get real time feedback on how best to access and scale public benefits so they can reach exponentially more students and ensure that these students are able to successfully complete programs & be on a trajectory towards job and economic security.
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Harlem Children’s Zone (Harlem Communities – NYC)
Challenge: How Might We Better Serve Harlem Families Who are Not Accessing HCZ’s Resources?
Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) is a pioneering nonprofit organization committed to ending generational poverty in Central Harlem.
Historically, HCZ has offered several opportunities for assessment, referral and in-person direct services (e.g., legal consultation, benefit screening, financial counseling, tax preparation, adult education courses) through various programs, including Community Pride and Single Stop. Over the years, these programs have faced various challenges such as discontinued funding, duplication of efforts, or leadership changes. It’s important for us to continue serving the adult population in Harlem, but we wish to define our priorities and align our resources to deliver services in the most effective and efficient manner.
- Clarify the priorities for direct community services (by talking to the customer)
- Design how we will deliver these services using existing resources
- Create a financial model to demonstrate cost-effectiveness
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Mobdiun: Creative Youth (Youth and Deradicalization- Tunisia)
Challenge: How Might We Create a Scalable and Sustainable Model for Youth Development across Tunisia?
Mobdiun – Creative Youth is a social impact organization founded in 2016. Mobdiun, meaning ‘creatives’ in Arabic, inspires young girls and boys, living in marginalized communities where the Tunisian Revolution was sparked and are today at risk of violent extremism, to become the peaceful and creative change leaders of their communities Mobdiun uses arts, sports and technology in order to help amplify their voices and to contribute to their social, economic and political inclusion.
In its short-term strategy, Mobdiun proposes to implement a comprehensive pilot project in Kram Ouest in order to serve the 9.000 teenagers aged 10 – 19 who live in the area. In its longer-term strategy, Mobdiun wants to scale to similar at-risk working-class neighborhoods and potentially impact 500.000 young people from the same age group.
Mobidun staff will be leading teens through a four-month Leadership Academy workshop where they will learn the basics of human centered design and will run a design challenge around youth and civic engagement. Youth teams will create civic action groups and will explore, reframe, generate and prototype solutions to problems that they encounter on a daily basis. By creating solutions for their after school programs at the Mobdiun Youth House, teens will actively participate in positive leadership and learn valuable skills around project management and creating deliverables.
Columbia students will work with Mobdiun from January-May 2020 on Youth oriented policy in marginalized neighborhoods, Creating a guiding framework and a “manual” procedure for the youth centers that formalizes and standardizes the best practices for the youth; ie, welcome procedure in the youth houses located in marginalized neighborhoods, services that should be offered depending on youth situations, the best practices and benchmarks of the policies and procedures of advanced countries. This will be a direct continuation of the Fall Leadership Academy project. One goal will be to convince the Ministry of Youth to endorse this project, supervise it, and commit to adopt it in a newly elected government. Students will create a prototype national public policy for youth in critically underserved areas.
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Witness (Human Rights and Media – NYC)
Challenge: How might we enable more people around the world to harness the power of video effectively in their fight for human rights?
About WITNESS: WITNESS.org is a global human rights organization that has partnered with 420+ groups in over 130 countries since its founding in 1992. Specialized in the use of video for the defense and promotion of human rights, WITNESS has supported partners using video to expose war crimes, protect indigenous land rights, stop police violence, defend immigrants, fight hate speech, and many other issues. With staff based around the world, WITNESS is constantly learning about new tactics –and gaps– in the global field of video-for-change. Because WITNESS believes these learnings don’t belong to us –but rather to the movement– the organization sees sharing what we’re learning as an ethical obligation and a defining aspect of our ethos as an organization.
About the project:
Over the years, WITNESS has ramped up efforts to make what we’re learning more accessible to more people who could benefit from this knowledge (see, for example: the Video for Change book, published in 2005 and available online in six languages; and the Video Advocacy curriculum, launched in 2007 with 37 sessions covering everything from storytelling to interviewing survivors of abuse to creating an overarching strategy for advocacy with video.) We’ve done this by putting our curriculum online, creating social-media derivatives in several languages, responding to direct events like protests, hiring locally-based staff, organizing opportunties for activists to connect and swap tactics, working with partners to tailor and localize different bits of the guidance, and more. Today our online Library is home to over 180 training resources (including videos, guides, tipsheets) in more than 27 languages – all available for free. We’ve seen activists download, add to, remix and then share these materials with their own networks, a testament to their usefulness. Much progress has been made in ensuring more people access this guidance, but yet we’re only scratching the surface.
Based on this assumption, WITNESS recently created a new Learning & Sharing program to craft a long-term vision for how we could better learn and share. In the WITNESS context this could mean, for example, assessing which learnings from a local context (like protests in Rio, for example) could have global relevance when new protests erupt in Hong Kong or Mexico; or, in another scenario, how learnings about collecting visual evidence of illegal deforestation in the Amazon could be shared with indigenous communities and activists facing similar challenges in Malaysia. This work seeks not to copy-paste solutions, but to avoid duplication of mistakes and build on a global field of existing knowledge to help activists use video more effectively, strategically, ethically and safely.
For this partnership we’re looking to learn more about how organizations and movements learn. What are the best models, methodologies, workflows and practices for LEARNING in the human rights sector and beyond? We’ve identified 80+ entities – from corporations like the Cheesecake Factory to peers like New Tactics for Human Rights to Firefighter Trade Associations and more – and we’d like to scan their tactics, approaches to help us understand which of these strategies could benefit those using video for justice and human rights. Help us!