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“We all have the power to go and see and feel and share what we felt. When we do this we often say we’ve been moved. Taken literally that implies starting in one place and ending up in another. It is the basis for all social change.”
Bill Shore, Founder, “Share our Strength.”

Tradition still holds sway over the contemporary mores and every-day logic of the western world in the diverse villages that make up the Lake Atitlán watershed in Guatemala. It’s been roughly three weeks since our return from a week of field-research visits with the team of students and faculty of the current “Creating Social Value through Design” class, our first Designmatters project funded by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), a remarkable foundation that rewards social innovation and entrepreneurship efforts amongst a highly regarded cadre of academic institutions in the country.

Inspired by “Product Design for the Developing World”, a course led by our colleague Dr. Ken Pickar from the Mechanical Engineering Department at the California Institute of Technology in which students from Art Center and Rafael Landívar University have been participating for the past five years; this is the first true opportunity we have to bring that cross-disciplinary expertise into the studio setting of the Department of Product Design at Art Center with a project that is firmly anchored in a human-centered approach to design thinking with the leadership of principal Investigator Steve Montgomery (Graduate Industrial Design Faculty) and Liliana Becerra (Product Design Faculty), as well as teaching assistants Radhika Bhalla (Graduate Industrial Design) and Dice Yamaguchi (Product Design alumnus) and a series of expert advisors including Tony Luna, Guatemalan Anthropologist Luz Marina Delgado, and USC Marshall School of Business Adlai Wertman.

Following the Designmatters mandate, our ambition is to frame this educational experience with meaningful and participatory engagement at the local level, and in addition to our continuing the collaboration with the Landívar students of Ovidio Morales, we are privileged to have partnered with the community development organization Asociación Ati’t Ala‘ in San Juan La Laguna, and their impressive Executive Director Mónica Berger, to seek opportunities for breakthrough change on several interrelated fronts. Two key areas of investigation and ideation of the student work will address questions about product diversification and access to expanded markets for the local population (95% Mayan, predominantly Tz’utujil and Kaqchickel) whose spinning of cotton and weaving techniques can hark back to that of their millennial ancestors….Another important direction is to contribute strategy, branding and communication for the nascent “Atitlán Azul,” certification initiative, which addresses the environmental breakdown and dangerous bloom of cyanobacteria that is threatening the lake and the livelihood of its people (for a detailed account check Time Magazine’s article at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1942501,00.html).

I have so treasured my time in Guatemala with the students—this is such a committed team. As I write this, ideation is going full force ahead in the class. So is the process of innovation firmly underway: through that intrinsically optimistic design process that allows us to see and imagine the world not as it is, but as it could be—for the better.

Illustration by Katherine Siy for
The LA Earthquake Source Book

The Haiti Earthquake is a natural and man-made disaster of catastrophic proportions with tragic loss of life, immense heartbreak and widespread devastation. Hard to comprehend that this long-suffering and impoverished island nation would have to be the one, of all places, to endure the wrath of such an event. A quake that experts already anticipate will be ranked as one of the most destructive in modern history.

While the search and rescue effort tails off and clogged pipelines for water, food, medical supplies and care open up, it has been phenomenal to watch the outpouring of humanitarian aid and the mobilization of so many—from single individuals to large organizations—stepping up to help.

More than a handful of our partner organizations and friends are first responders who have deployed immediately: Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, International Medical Corps, the Pan American Health Organization, The Organization of American States, the International Rescue Committee, Project Concern International, Un Techo Para MI Pais, Architecture for Humanity…

We salute them all.

The challenge, but also the real prospect for lasting change for the people of Haiti, lies in the long-term assistance and capacity building projects that have a new opportunity to prosper in the region. It is exciting to imagine the important role the design community can play in the long road to reconstruction ahead.

I write the last post of the year from Santiago, Chile, where a workshop on social innovation co-organized by the Inter-American Developmental Bank (IADB) and our partners from the Innovation Center of Un Techo para Mi Pais brought together a handful of educators in business, engineering and design from universities across Latin America (Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Peru were represented) to connect about best practices and “apply innovation and creativity to fulfill unmet human needs” and improve basic quality of life of low-income communities—a population of 360 million folks throughout the continent who make the bottom of the pyramid bracket.

The two day meeting was also a great platform to share the outcomes of our students’ work from the Safe Agua Chile project led by the departments of Environmental and Product Design, and to experience anew and first hand the inspiring work of Techo here as the countdown for the end of campamentos (slums) in Chile–September 18, 2010–is less than a year away.

Techo organized a very special site visit for the group: lunch with a few families and a tour of the construction site of the neighboring permanent houses where the community is getting ready to move soon to. Veronica, the community leader who hosted us shared how proud everyone felt about one of the local girls winning the important short story contest Techo runs each year. Janitza Muñoz, the twelve year-old author of the story, inspired her to no longer call her community “campamento” but “ciudad de madera” (the city of wood). A magical place, where all work to rally strength, overcome obstacles, and make it together with collective savings for their viviendas definitivas.

On my last day, and back at Techo, the highlight was to get reunited with Rosita Reyes, the community leader who facilitated so much access to the twenty families from campamento San Jose where the team worked this past August. It was a privilege to say hello again, and share on behalf of the faculty: Dan Gottlieb, Penny Herscovitch and Liliana Becearra, a photomontage of each student at finals. Rosita took a long and careful look of this highly symbolic document of the exceptional bond that this project brought about for all of us, and said proudly: “this goes with me when we move into our homes next year.”

I’m back from glorious snowed-in Aspen Meadows, where AIGA and Winterhouse Institute staged the Aspen Design Summit. This meeting was focused on complex, real world problems that can be addressed through the ingenuity and “progressive reach of design’s influence,” in the words of AIGA’s Richard Grefé. With the support of Rockefeller Foundation — which is keen to see more collaboration and capacity building across the design industry in this social impact arena — all 64 attendees at the Summit were organized into six groups that developed preliminary strategies and action schemes around diverse challenges. Positioned as the scaffolding for feasible and fundable programs that could be executed in the next 24 months, key organizations and partners were engaged, including the CDC (healthy aging), UNICEF (educational kits and adolescence hygiene), and Mayo Clinic (rural health delivery).

I was thrilled to be assigned to the UNICEF projects and to reunite with a previous Designmatters’s partner, Christopher Fabian (head of the Innovation unit at UNICEF), and to understand more about the logistics and needs behind UNICEF’s current deployment of resources to reach underserved children and young girls. We worked both to rethink what the design of a low cost, durable Early Childhood Education kit that can be used in emergency situations could look like (and we took apart the current one); and partnered with SHE founder, Elizabeth Scharpf, to understand where we might be able to offer new strategies for a social enterprise model in Rwanda that is bringing support services for menstruating women and girls — so that they are more likely to continue to attend work and classes during their cycles.

Beyond the fact that there is always something slightly surreal in attempting to even begin tackling world poverty issues from the pampered environment of one of the most privileged spots in the world, there were the following and exciting take-aways for me:
1/ to participate in a conversation about the designer’s role in the future, and seriously attempting to come to terms with the landscape of social impact and development;
2/ getting validation and encouragement for our work.

We are up to our necks, day-in and day-out, pushing this agenda of design for social change forward in ways that can be meaningful to our students and impactful to our community partners. It does feel good to get a pat in the back from peers who have similar war stories to tell, and rewarding to have memories to share from this type of engagement. Now back to the grind of making the next round of projects happen — and the promise of design education as a tool for change.

Guest blog by Radhika Bhalla, MS Candidate, Graduate Industrial Design Department.

I would like to call it a conincidence that my IDDS experience started with butterflies and ended with butterflies. The picture that documents my arrival at Tek Credit Union Hostel at KNUST, Kumasi does not capture the butterflies that were in my stomach. It is hard to believe that I could grin so wide after spending 8 hours in a bus and an entire day before that rushong through airport terminals. After a spring of anticipation and a summer of preperations, I was finally in Ghana, not really sure what to expect from IDDS.

The International Development Design Summit is “is a month-long collaboration that brings together people from around the globe to build technologies for communities in the developing world.” A diverse group with people from more than 20 countries speaking a variety of languages and coming from different backgrounds, we were engineers and designers and students and professors and farmers and social activists, but we all had one goal - to make an impact in the community around us.
I found myself having breakfast with an Irish “lad” - Niall Walsh - who had just graduated in English Literature from Trinity College. What was he doing there? Other than blogging about the conference, Niall, Meg and I casted our first aluminum piece of art at Suame Magazine, an informal cluster of 100,000 (or more) mechanics working in the heart of Kumasi.

In one of the preliminary design activities, I worked with Suprio Das and Miguel Chaves. Suprio is an Indian from Calcutta who is currently working with people in nearby villages affected by arsenic in drinking water. His terrace is his workshop and his toilet is his lab. Miguel is a studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sao Paulo and is one of the founders of Engineers Without Borders Brazil, which he started after his first IDDS summer in 2007.
My project for the rest of the summer was designing and building “child-friendly latrines”. My team was as diverse as the rest of IDDS. Gago arrived a few days late from Tibet, and along with him brought a lot of music and calm to our group. (I was surprised to hear him sing a familiar Bollywood song in Tibetan!) Mariam is half Iranian and half Irish who grew up in Spain and just graduated from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. She spent last summer writing guidelines for planning refugee camps and is currently working with water and sanitaiton in Ecuador. Amber is a mechanical engineering student from MIT who arrived with just a tiny backpack and lots of ideas on composting and moulding toilet seats. Casserdy makes and repairs wheelchairs in Zambia and was our go-to person for any kind of fabrication. And John Manu from New Longoro, Ghana not only taught us about the Ghanian context, but made his village our second home.

When all of us first got together, we had absolutely no idea how this was going to work. We had not one participant from the year before, and we started on a blank page. Little did we knkow that the IDDS vision of “prototypes, not papers” would not be our biggest challenge, but how to get the protoype on a pick-up truck would be the hardest thing to do!

To help with our projects, we had a team of mentors who were accessible 24X7. A pool of talent was available to us, whether it was research techniques from IDEO or engineering facts from MIT. One of the best conversations I had that summer was with Paul Polak, the founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE), a non-profit organization which has ended poverty for millions of people in rural areas worldwide. His book, “Out of Poverty” is a must-read for anyone who wants to work in the development sector.

We learn not only from the mentors, but from one another too. Miguel taught us how to make a solar water heater using recycled materials. All you need is PET bottles, empty tetrapacks, PVC pipes, and black paint. We built a module that would get four of us ten minutes of a hot shower everyday. And by the end of IDDS, all of us would have had a hot shower atleast once!

I was glad that I could share some of the work that I had been doing at Art Center with the rest of the participants. Sometimes, while sitting down in the basement of GradID, I find myself alone and lost in this world of creating products for premium luxury experiences. While I am glad that more and more classes are focussing on social and sustainable design, spending a summer with people who are working towards the same goals as you, creates an unimaginable community of high energy and great respect. It was nice to get feedback on projects from experts and people living in the areas that it was designed for, to find partners who would like to work with you further, or just have someone come and say - “Wow! That was an amazing presentation!”

I would like to call it a conincidence that my IDDS experience started with butterflies and ended with butterflies. On the last day of Maker Faire Africa, I met Louisa from Butterfly Works - a social solution and design agency. I would like to end with a quote from their book - ” A flutter of a wing of a butterfly can result in a chain of events which changes the lives of millions of people. Butterflies do not push. They inspire. They do not follow trodden paths, but less predictable trajectories, graceful, cross-pollinating the places they visit, curious, relentless.”

Guest blogger Tony Luna Adjunct Professor, Art Center College of Design

It all started due to one startling statistic, that 98% of the water in Guatemala is contaminated.

That compelling statistic was one of many motivating statements derived from the research in Dr. Ken Pickar’s incredibly relevant Caltech class, “Product Design for the Developing World” otherwise known as ME-105. One of the many attributes of this unique course is that it brings together the talents of Caltech science and engineering students with design and art students from Art Center College of Design, and students from the Universidad Rafael Landivar in Guatemala to create useful products for populations that make less than two dollars a day. I had had the honor of first meeting and working with Dr. Pickar in an entrepreneurially oriented class in 2001 and that class evolved into this extraordinary opportunity for our design students to interact with engineering students to address real world issues of social and humanitarian concern.

So it became totally relevant when Designmatters, under the direction of Mariana Amatullo, chose to support the work of one of the team projects, “Agua Pura,” who at the time were studying various cost effective ways to purify water. The students involved in this worthwhile project were Armie Pasa and Gabe La O’ from Art Center, and Amit Ghandi and Eric Johlin from Caltech, and I was the Faculty Advisor.

In August 2007, Armie and Gabe had the opportunity to travel to Guatemala to learn first-hand the needs of those living in rural areas. One of the issues faced by many Guatemalans is having access to pure and clean water especially in rural areas. According to the Guatemala Ministry of Health, “98 percent of the country’s water sources are contaminated with water-borne diseases such as typhoid fever, hepatitis A, cholera, giardia, and amebiasis. As a result, affected adults are absent from work or cannot be as productive, while children are unable to attend school and suffer from permanent developmental damage. Additional statistics show that 40 percent of Guatemala’s population has no access to clean water, and of the 331 municipalities in Guatemala, only 24 have drinking water treatment systems, and of these 24, only 15 systems are currently in operation.”

In 2008 Designmatters, on behalf of the Agua Pura-Art Center/Caltech collaboration, submitted a grant proposal to encourage water purification research to the World Water Forum. The World Water Forum is a joint venture of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District, the U. S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation, the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, Water for People, Friends of the United Nations, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. Our Agua Pura project was awarded $9,800.00 to (as stated in the grant proposal) “…develop a solar water purifying system. This product will draw impure water into a treatment area where the sun’s heat will help evaporate the water through a sheet of glass. Next, the water vapor will condense on the glass, bead, and drip down into a clean water storage area. The purified water can then either be collected or routed into an indoor container.”

What transpired over approximately the next ten months was truly amazing as our four students, together with their Landivar University counterparts, took the most basic low-tech concepts, built prototypes, did field studies and tests, and refined the products. Most importantly they learned from each other. It was amazing to see them cross-pollinating, approaching challenges from differing points of view, and working out new ways to communicate and evolve their unique product. Along with the predictable learning of technical skills they learned life skills that they will carry forward into their careers.

On May 26, 2009 they presented their prototype at the World Water Forum along the grant recipients from seventeen other California colleges and universities. In attendance was Congresswoman Grace F. Napolitano, 38th. District, who is Chair of the Water and Power Subcommittee for the 110th Congress and who continues to serve as Subcommittee Chairwoman in the current, 111th Congress. It was a proud day for our students as they demonstrated their product and delivered a slide presentation to the assembly. The general consensus was overwhelmingly positive and encouraged the team to take this concept to the next level, to scale up the output and to bring down the costs. And it became apparent that this product could be used in a myriad of locations where a scarcity of water is a growing concern including American Indian Reservations, National Parks, and in post-disaster situations where water is an especially precious commodity.

Without the solid foundation provided by Designmatters this valuable research might not have been done. Without the brain power and resources of the world class educational institutions and especially the direction and innovation of Dr. Pickar projects such as these might not have the environment to evolve. Without the backing of the World Water Forum an important contribution may have not been able to get to the next step. It is because of these unique institutions and people that very important questions, such as water purification, can continue to be addressed and a new generation of socially motivated, intelligent students can focus their energies to improving our human condition.

For more information about the conscientious work being done by the students in this class you may link to www.pddw.org.

Two of our fall project collaborations were launched this past month of August with several days of immersive field research in rural villages outside Antigua, Guatemala, and slum communities in the southern outskirts of Santiago, Chile.

An upcoming post will provide a closer window into the work of the five Art Center students and Photo Department faculty member Sharon Cavanagh, who joined the Caltech and Landivar University students in a week of field research in Guatemala that took them deep into Mayan rural settlements for the Design for Development class at Caltech.

In Chile, the hospitality extended by our partners led by Programa Mínimo Founder Julián Ugarte at the Innovation Center of the NGO Un Techo Para Chile, offered our multidisciplinary team of twelve students/ and three faculty (Penny Herscovitch & Daniel Gottlieb from Environmental Design, and Liliana Becerra from CMTEL/Product Design), of the Safe Agua project invaluable access to a better understanding about daily life in the campamento San José. Twenty families generously opened their homes to us for a learning journey into what it takes to accomplishing quotidian tasks without running water. These families live in a transitional settlement made of modest wood structures, each known as a “media agua,” that Techo helps secure with government subsidies. Most impressive about Techo’s work: (which started in Chile in 1997 rallying young university student volunteers, and now continues spreading throughout Central and South America; fifteen country chapters–see Un Techo para Mi Pais they go beyond an organization that seeks to end slum dwelling conditions, they facilitate the social integration and capacity building it takes to help these families conquer urban poverty and secure permanent homes.

Techo’s work is so deeply impactful and presents so many opportunities for design innovation, that I would be remiss to do it justice with any summary recap. Instead, as I survey the mounts of photos, data collection, research outcomes and initial design directions of the team, and proudly review the Chilean national press articles (Santiago Times, El Diario Diseno, La Tercera, El Mercurio) that chronicled our presence with this extraordinary community, it is the quiet conversations and more personal exchanges that I partook in that stay with me. All of us unanimously returned to Pasadena transformed in so many positive ways by the experience, touched by new friendships, and a resolute sense of responsibility that we can meet and exceed the promise of this collaboration.

We simply have to.

For the educational success of the project, and for Rosita Reyes–the inspirational community leader of the campamento San José–who keeps the star-studded Chilean flag flying high on the roof of her media agua as a symbol of her conviction and dreams for a better tomorrow: the day when the whole community will move to permanent homes. I see her contagious smile and hear her still as she tells me: “Este es un campamento con sueños”: this is a community with dreams.

And the great poet/songwriter Silvio Rodriguez’ guitar and verses from En Busca de un Sueño (Descartes album) resonate with new meaning as well:
En busca de un sueño– van generaciones,
en busca de un sueño, hermoso y rebelde,
en busca de un sueño, cuántas ilusiones….

(In search of a dream, generations go, in search of a dream, beautiful and rebellious, in search of a dream, so much hope…)

Designmatters was part of the Big City Forum program recently–Leonardo Bravo’s “creative speakeasy” as he sometimes informally refers to it, a truly present-day LA salon that engages an eclectic group in conversation about the multiple layers (urban, civic, social, economical, design-driven) that make up the fragmented reality of our city.

It was thrilling to be invited to dialogue about “Design as a Catalyst for Change” with such a great group of practioners, artists, architects, and designers, and listen to Alissa Walker and her enchanting and witty brand of activism (follow her through her great blog Gelato Baby. Almost a full year out, Art Center’s own Sean Donahue gave a brilliant recap of LA Has Faults, the research and urban intervention Sean led in MacArthur Park, which became such a central component of the communication and public advocacy “disruptions” we designed for the LA Earthquake Get Ready project.

There was palpable energy in the room throughout the evening. Leonardo is committed to creating an “idea lab about the city,” and he is succeeding beautifully by my book.

A few days later I was fortunate to be included in another significant exchange in the magnificent setting of Philip Johnson’s Glass House. As a National Trust Historic Site, the Glass House not only represents a Mecca for modernism and the preservation of modern architecture, but is also positioning its mission and programs as a center point for innovation and new ideas. It is in this spirit of extending beyond boundaries and continuing the legacy of many influential conversations that happened throughout Johnson’s lifetime, that the Glass House Conversations now take place as invitational dialogues on a variety of issues. A short interview video with RISD President John Maeda provides a terrific reference of what these gatherings are all about in the context if this profoundly magical place. For ours, Maurice Cox from the National Endowment for the Arts moderated the “Citizen Designer” exchange. An anchor of the theme revolved around architecture and design education and practice: how do we build a cadre of public interest designers, and help foster new paradigms of engagement, relevance, and design for social impact moving forward?

Looking into the etymology of conversation, I am reminded of its Latin precursor and its definitions, “conversari: to associate with,” and “convertere: to turn around.” Both references capture how very dynamic these two conversations were–in the company of peers who are asking hard questions, framing the future thinking of our disciplines, and searching for drivers of change. Conversations that are bound to provoke exciting turn around models ahead. Read More or Comment … »

Guest blogger Zelda Harrison, AIGA XCD

Reflections on self-validation; what is the role of “Social Design”?

Clearly I’m trying to outsmart myself by playing off the name of my blog host; but I’m hoping this invitation will allow me to explore some questions that have dogged me –and possibly others as well? — for quite a while now.

What’s a picture truly worth these days?

In our close-knit community, the answer has long been “a lot”, or at least more than we typically get paid for. We like to trace our professional ancestry back to Toulouse-Lautrec, whose vivid, colorful posters promised the wild, rollicking fun in Pigalle-Gay Paree that many could only dream of.

Whenever it was necessary to rouse up some patriotic sentiment to sacrifice oneself and loved ones, propaganda posters did the trick. Fast forward to the 1960s where a combination of accessible technology, affordable print materials and Rage Against the System found its voice in some of the most dramatic expressions of our time.

Visual Provocateur

With the likes of Herb Lubalin, editorial, advertising and even identity programmes found perfect pitch in its ability to incite, emote and awaken the consciousness of the public.

This was the image of the Ideal, Fulfilled Designer that I bought into coming into the profession; it has made the incredibly long hours of (sometimes) tedious negotiations, ideation and production bearable. The payoff has been real when I note the pride and a sense of identification that branding creates for a non-profit at community event, or when I observe that well-designed publications and collateral inspires confidence and a sense of professionalism with sponsors.

Upgrading Design

Lately though, I get the sense that the role as educator and provacateur extraordinaire is losing its sheen. It could be proliferation of powerful word-imagery play that sells everything from socks to software. It could be that our all-too-elusive audience is moving at lightning speed, making communicators work harder to captivate and lock in attention span. What’s more likely is the fact that a global awareness has set in: the economic and social issues we face today — notably that of the environment — have finally brought home the Laws of Connectivity and revealed the intricate ties that bind us. Basically, It’s a Small World After All is hard core reality and not a quaint, wistful tune any more, and it’s time to upgrade our toolkits from the one-off pro-bono flyer or newsletter to Social Design 2.5

I think it came home to me when I came across David Oberholtzer’s post David quotes Soft Spot

“Design is no longer a one-way street. If the users who encounter your design don’t add to the design’s value in some way, then you are doing something wrong. Gone are the days in which a designer fights for causes by making an awareness poster or a book that informs people about an issue…(we must) invite and inspire everyone to work for (a better world)”…

It only makes sense, I began to think, after all, isn’t the end-user being invited to design all sorts of products and services these days? Why not give people an incentive to design social solutions — and possibly a new reality — as well?

From Information to Participation

So how does this translate? Into more interaction with the clients and communities we are trying to support? Possibly. Into collaborations that involve diverse disciplines of communicators and solution-providers like architects, behavioral scientists, engineers, photographers, landscape and urban designers? Very likely. More self-education and awareness on our part about the forces that shape our lives at home and abroad? Most definitely.

As the conversation continues, I invite you to share your ideas and experiences, triumphs and disappointments about upgrading “Social Design” and making Design Matter.

Zelda Harrison currently serves as President for the AIGA Center for CrossCultural Design (AIGA XCD). Issues of cross-culture are a natural part of her experience: she has traveled throughout Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe, living on 3 different continents.

AIGA XCD

Read More or Comment … »

Guest blogger Sara Hofmann

Spring time in New York, cocktails, delicious food and two major awards – all in one night! I had the honor of representing the “Images Speak” team during the 88th Art Directors Club gala party in New York. The event took place in the charismatic Manhattan Art Gallery District at the ADC gallery.

I came to New York knowing that the Designmatter’s publication “Images Speak” had been awarded with an ADC cube for its illustrations. Five Art Center students including me had worked on the book over several months. I didn’t know up until this evening if it was a Gold, Silver or Bronze cube. After an informal gathering, the award ceremony began, featuring many fantastic international artists, designers and agencies who were honored in various categories - advertising, interactive media, graphic design, publication design, packaging, photography and illustration. I knew that only Gold and Silver winners would be called on stage. I was actually a bit nervous if Art Center and our book would be part of these winners and therefore be called on stage; especially because the Gold and Silver winning projects will go on a world wide traveling exhibition and be showcased in the 88th ADC Annual. I was thrilled when I heard my name and received a Silver cube for our book, but that wasn’t all! In addition, the book received a very special award: the Corbis Creativity for Social Justice Award for outstanding creative work done for a non-profit on a pro bono basis. It made me very proud to be part of the Images Speak team because the project was about hope and open-mindedness. It was meant to inspire and encourage young artists and designers to engage in humanitarian projects and make an impact on the world with their designs and artwork.