Kiran Sethi
Design for Change Contest
Ahmedabad, India
Kiran Bir Sethi got her diploma in Visual Communication from the National Institute of Design. She is also the founder of aProCh - an initiative attempting to make our cities more child friendly, for which she was awarded the Ashoka Fellow in 2008. As founder and director of the Riverside School in Ahmedabad she received the 'Call to Conscience' award from the King Centre at Stanford, for the citizenship/liberation curriculum that Riverside School implemented in 2009. In 2010, she conceptualized and promoted the world's largest Design for Change contest for school children which got over 250,000 children to design solutions for some of the world's most challenging problems. Recently she has been invited as a speaker at TEDIndia, as a Keynote Speaker at the M.I. Symposium in Beijing - alongside Dr. Howard Gardner, and just a few weeks ago to meet President Obama on his visit to India.
www.designforchangecontest.com
www.designforchangecontest.com
Hope is Not a Strategy
Design for Change
Motivation
Design for Change was started by Kiran Bir Sethi in Ahmedabad and has grown from a simple idea into a global movement designed to give young people an opportunity to express their own ideas for a better world and put them into action.
Approach
The Design for Change Contest asked students to do three very simple things: Feel, Imagine, and Do. What the contest made visible was that such a straightforward framework inspired children across the world to say 'I Can!' Children of all ages are designing and implementing projects that really touch the heart of their communities. Children are dreaming up and leading brilliant ideas all over the world, from catching rainwater and saving it in 'water sheds' to challenging age-old superstitions in rural communities, from campaigning for better conditions for children in urban environments to educating adults in literacy, sustainability, and environmental good practice, from earning their own money to finance school computers to alleviating hardship in troubled communities – children are proving that they have what it takes to be better stewards of the planet than previous generations.
The movement has inspired hundreds of thousands of children, their teachers and parents, to discover that they matter, that change is possible and that they can lead and inspire change themselves.
Conclusion
In two years Design for Change has spread to 21 countries around the world – without capital investment, without central management and without a business plan. It is fueled by human capital alone – passion, belief, and a compelling sense of purpose.
At heart, all children are social entrepreneurs and have the belief that they can make the world a better place.
Extensions
Making Design for Change an annual celebration using Gandhiji's birthday as a milestone date - and getting his birthday declared as 'Be the Change' day. Also, getting the case studies of DFC published as a value based curriculum for schools - underway with Longman Pearson.
References
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