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Challenge #80 Be a part of a Design Revolution |
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Summary: 2.7B people in the world live on less than $2/day, barely able to survive, with no hope for finding a way out of poverty. At the same time, 90% of the world’s design talent is focused on designing products that meet the needs of the richest 10% of the world. In addition, traditional poverty alleviation approaches based on charity have not been successful at lifting the 2.7B out of poverty. In order to make a significant impact on poverty alleviation, no less than a revolution in design approach and market serving is needed. By viewing the poor as customers (not recipients), and focusing on serving this market with affordable products that enable the poor to earn their way out of poverty, we can make substantial inroads in the mission to eliminate poverty and all its attendant social ills. MISSION: To create a design revolution by enlisting the best designers in the world to develop products and ideas that will benefit the 90% of the people on earth who are poor, in order to help them earn their way out of poverty. We do this in three ways: Inspiring, Educating and Connecting We are looking for the best tools to involve designers in this mission. (I added two videos to help communicate the philosophy behind this concept.) |
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Incentive: Signed Book OUT OF POVERY, by Paul Polak |
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Embed: Access type: public |
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| views: 468 | solutions: 4 | comments: 5 | watchers: 3 |
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solar africa www.greenskiesenergy.com I have the company and the technological experience to make it happen. I need help designing a separate LLC for a GreenSkies Africa project. I own and operate the company and time is tough to find, but i can lead and teach interested volunteers. By enabling solar energy at a full scale, costs go down dramatically (as low as $2 US/watt installed), jobs are provided, skills are learned, infrastructure is improved and citizens gain energy freedom that can only come from a distributive source like solar.... and then there's the environmental benefit.... produce raw materials for, manufacture, assemble and install low-wattage, affordable solar energy, solar refrigeration, and solar hot water.
Solution by redcloudagency posted on 11/04/2008 17:09 location: United States |
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here's my plan http://www.scribd.com/doc/215449/Needbased-Enterprise-Development http://www.scribd.com/doc/215449/Needbased-Enterprise-Development http://www.scribd.com/doc/215449/Needbased-Enterprise-Development
Solution by mpstaton posted on 11/10/2008 12:22 location: United States |
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And the winner is Solar Africa You can find out more about Mike's endeavors by visiting the following web sites. http://www.solar-aid.org/ http://www.greenskiesenergy.com/ Congratulations to Mike Silvestrini!!! Mike will be receiving a signed copy of Paul Polak's book Out of Poverty.
Solution by isaac posted on 11/24/2008 13:35 location: United States |
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Special thanks also to Sami Design for Social Entrepreneurship studio at RISD (www.de-se.blogspot.com) Design teacher and advocate for social enterprise.
Solution by isaac posted on 11/24/2008 13:41 location: United States |
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Not that I'm biased, but what a great idea!
A great idea indeed Paul! How do we enlist the top designers? Well I have a promising group of students in my Design for Social Entrepreneurship studio at RISD (www.de-se.blogspot.com) I think would be ready to sign up. Could we create an equivalent to Teach for America, or Peace Corps- Design Corps? Or Design for America? Let's enlist! This is the next revolution. And I suggest not only looking at the BoP in the developing world, but how do we design for the under-served communities here in the states? For people living from check to check, or hand-out to hand-out. My class is exploring this topic for the remainder of the semester.
Thanks for the great work Paul!
Best
Sami
www.de-se.blogspot.com
we get a signed book for coming up with what? a roadmap? an idea? a nice comment?
if i figure out how to release the worlds design energy to solve problems for the worlds poor, the signed book is a rather irrelevant reward. i would assume i'd be BFF with your team.
in addition, no one person is going to solve this. 
I am the EUROPEAN FEMALE DESIGNER OF THE YEAR 2007... I'll get Involved!
Visit http://www.d-rev.org/