Design for Change Contest

Via Landor

Kiran Bir Sethi is head teacher and founder of the Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India. She was trained as a designer and is driven to look beyond what exists, and lives by the never answered question of “can we do this a better way?” Last year, this thinking initiated her Design for Change contest, a design contest for children that in rapid time reached 32,000 schools. Design for Change is a world-changing contest that puts the power to make a change in the hands of our children. The children follow a four step process—feel, imagine, do, and share—in order to empower them with the idea that they, too, young as they are, can be leaders of change. The whole process seems pretty simple. Kids are put in groups of a maximum of five. They select an issue, find a doable solution, create an action plan, implement the action plan, and document it with video or other multimedia tools.

Design for Change has been so successful in its homeland India that it has now grown into a global contest. And what is even more interesting is that in many countries, the local Design for Change organization partners with established agencies to spread the “I can” message throughout their regions. Each country will have a local competition and the winner will participate in the global contest, with a chance to present the story at the United Nations.

Visit the Design for Change website. The last date for submission of entries is 2nd October.