Fellow Story: Design and Social Change
One of my favorite subjects under the technology branch is how the intersection of anthropological research methods, like user studies, and engineering is being used to for social good. Like the work of Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Pradip Sarmah--he observed two challenges for Rickshaw drivers in Rural India: 1) Rickshaws are typically very heavy, and 2) they are expensive. He put 1 and 2 together and brought in a team of designers to come up with a light-weight, inexpensive version of the originals. He even went a step further and created a lending system so that these Rickshaw drivers could own the vehicles and be self-sufficient. Learn more about Pradip's work here. And if you are hungry for more Design and Social Change stories be sure to visit: Ideo, Design for the other 90%, Engineers without Borders.
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I was amazed by other story that I wanted to share here. It's about an inventor that is changing public health in India: Marc Koska. It all started when he realized that so many infections were spread by unsafe injections. He thought that if there was an affordable non-reusable syringe things could change dramatically: "The quest was to develop a syringe that could be made of the same materials on existing tooling and assembly equipment and used in exactly the same way as a conventional syringe – but with one minor, negligible cost modification that would make re-use impossible. The K1 was the result. And today, 17 years later, literally millions are used every week". You can read the whole story in his pretty cool website. Among other things, you can learn how the syringe became a mandate in the public health system in India.
Very interesting, Paula. Thanks!