Co-Designing Food Revolution for Social Change 2020

Enabling students to become changemakers and integrating sustainability as lifestyle in higher education is a priority. It requires a safe space where students can experience their journey within a healthy environment, which can fill a gap in theory and practice and connect them with nature, society and self. Visualizing the relationship of ME and WE, and a pathway for changemakers has been developing from previous action researches (Chung 2015 and 2018) presented in RSD5 and RSD7. This study proposes a visualized relationship between ME and WE to support changemakers’ pathway and showcases its experimental application through a project, Co-Designing Food Revolution for Social Change action research team at Zayed University in the UAE. It further explores a ME=WE framework, changemaker pathway and systemic pathway through co-designing a small scale food system in the immersive learning environment, the garden. A narrative of the concept development and the project pathway was visualized in the gigamap presented in RSD9. This paper discusses the findings and reflection on a ME=WE pathway unfolded with the KULNA project. The intention is to share the learning outcomes of the co-designing pathway for KULNA community garden project and the process of prototyping a future scenario.

Co-designing a social innovation model for changemakers 2018

This action research presents a co-designing process and social innovation model for changemakers. The process of developing participants’ roadmap to become a changemaker starts by understanding the potential of a conceptual framework of ME=WE, recognizing the value of co-design, co-creating tools to facilitate in a program, and witnessing personal (ME) and collective (WE) growth stories in a community setting. The study also explores how systems thinking has contributed to shaping the framework and tools created for the program. The driving force behind the development of this working model was a recognition of how our current higher education system is undergoing a paradigm shift to cultivate empathetic, driven and holistic young leaders and changemakers. With partial support from Zayed University in Dubai, UAE a platform titled INNOCO (INNOvation CO-designed) was initiated to co-create a pathway for youth to engage in hands-on learning and enable socially innovative action in their communities, all in an effort to create a movement of social change. 

AUTHORS: Yunsun Chung-Shin (yunsun.chung-shin@zu.ac.ae), Joanne Renaux (joanne.renaux@zu.ac.ae), Vijaya Chikermane (Vijaya@710stories.com)
KEYWORD: Changemakers, Co-Design, Education systems, Social Innovation, Transdisciplinary, Youth Empowerment, 

Empowering Students in Leading their Education and Practice: The Design Workbook 2018

How does education prepare future designers for current and future requirements of the field? An attempt to respond to this question is presented through the Design Workbook: a curricular project that has been proposed and developed over the course of three phases. In Phase One, the objectives, structure and format were defined: an online interface containing activities organised under five chapters that aim at building students’ creative confidence and sensitivity to surrounding contexts, and prepare them to lead their career path. In Phase Two, the website was developed to its first usable version, and content applied into live classes. Phase Three was marked with content refinement for the activities, navigation and feature redesign in the interface, and new ways of conducting the course. The article summarises learning points from the first two phases, and provides new findings and analyses from the final phase. It also includes a sample of the activities content, student works and feedback as well as the interface development stages. The methodology utilised throughout consisted of active research, as well as learning outcomes assessment using direct and indirect measures. Assessment results and classroom observations confirmed that students benefit greatly from visualising ideas, hands on activities, design thinking workshops, as well as from collaborative experiences, to avoid facing designer’s block and to practise empowerment of self and others. Finally, challenges, opportunities and future implications are discussed, alongside implementation possibilities: The Design Workbook can run as a sole course, spread across the curriculum, and expand into the community.

A Case Study of Cultivating Youth Empowerment 2015

This paper attempts to reflect upon the framework, process, and outcomes of cultivating youth empowerment by working with the youth community in Dubai. The key question is “How might we understand the relationship between action and reflection in the context of youth empowerment?” Through our organization GYEM (Global Youth Empowerment) we employed relational system mapping to plan and manage youth teams and facilitator trainings. Design thinking provided a framework of learning and action for workshop content development. The system of action and reflection characterized our development process in learning and curating effective content. Our content strived for youth to gain creative confidence, find passion and purpose, and learn tools to implement their ideas to action. We define empowerment as a state in which youth are able to channel the energy within them through their passion onto the community around them. We found that empowerment was a by-product of our participants experiencing the framework of ME = WE. The notion that personal growth depends upon collective advancement and vice versa. Action was manifested through systems-based practical design thinking and real-world action. Reflection occurred through applying systems thinking and design thinking to global issues and exploring possible solutions. This paper seeks to understand youth perspectives on our workshop, youth empowerment, and the empowerment ecosystem by reflecting on GYEM’s workshop development and auxiliary activities.