Designing for Social Change
Mugdha Sethi, Danny Merguei, Dorothee Hach, Madhumita Puri | Designers
Designing for Social Change: an event of the Beauty of Recycling Festival 2015.
The immense talent and creativity of the design community in India can enable social change if it is brought to the masses. To do this, designers need to extend their talents to address the problems facing these communities. Environmental issues such as waste management and recycling can also generate livelihoods for underprivileged communities via skill development. How does this affect the designers approach? What needs to change in design thinking to make it more sustainable and inclusive?This event brings together four designers from across India, sharing their work in this field.The Beauty of Recycling (BoR) is an event to highlight the aesthetic and economic reuse potential of waste. It will do this through an in depth questioning of our mindset towards waste and catalyse a change in our interaction with it. Individual presentations will be followed by a panel discussion facilitated by Manisha Gutman of eCoexist, a Pune based social enterprise that promotes ecosensitive products through socially sensitive means.
The Designers:
Mugdha Sethi, a graphic designer, artist and yoga teacher, Graduated from NID, Ahmedabad, in 1998. She’s a core member of a Design Collective Initiative called DIF (Design India Foundation) a non-profit startup that believes that Design can make a difference in the quality of lives where it matters most. DIF connects the design community with social enterprises, and mentors design projects that change livelihoods. They work in the area of craft, environment, and energy, waste management.
Danny Merguei is the co-founder of the WELL (Women Empowerment through Local Livelihood) project, known as Wellpaper. Wellpaper was founded on 2005 as tsunami rehabilitation program in Tamil Nadu next to Auroville. Since the beginning the WELL project is experiencing constant transformations in creating a sustainable model for social enterprise development. Today the WELL women conduct skills workshops and enterprise development training to NGO’s and interested groups.
Dorothee Hach grew up in Braunschweig, Germany, and joined Auroville in 1969. Working as independant architect for about 20 years. Since about 5 years doing research in the use of waste styrofoam. Crushed and mixed with cement developed as insulation- and light weight building material.
Madhumita Puri started Trash to Cash to address the issue of unemployment faced by persons with disability. At present she words on developing innovative marketing strategies and on product design. This venture was initiated 18 years after founding the Society for Child Development, where she focused on improving the quality of education of children with disability from poor communities. She holds a doctorate in Psychology and uses her understanding of human behavior to analyze situations and drive the venture. This is a great advantage as I am able to devise original solutions to on-going problems.
