Designing Social Change

Our modern world is constantly facing complicated and interconnected social problems that are more complex than we fully understand, and open to multiple interpretations based on one’s point of view. Poverty, unemployment, racism or drug abuse among young people are all perfect examples of social problems. We see traditional tools to addressing social challenges provide solutions with little impact and almost no sustainability in terms of significant change and that new approaches towards public sector innovation are required.

The objectives of “Designing Social Change” project are to empower youth workers, youth leaders and practitioners in the nonprofit and social sectors to use a creative approach for hands-on problem solving, to create better products, services, and experiences that keep people’s needs at the core and to work in more effective, human, and strategic ways with greater shared understanding. Over the past decade, human-centred design has emerged as a possible answer to dealing with societal challenges. This is a creative practical approach to problem-solving that starts with people and ends with innovative solutions that are tailor-made to suit their needs. As a tool it increases the possibility of creating impactful solutions by putting the person who will gain most at the heart of the innovation process. So we’ve designed a training course that can get the human-centered design methodology out to the world.

This course will introduce the human-centered design process and the way it can be applied to develop initiatives with social impact. Usually, people working with youth are striving to create change within complex systems, and their organizations tend to be resource-constrained when dealing with social challenges. Here arises the need for specific mindsets. Reflecting the underlying spirit that big problems demand innovative, impactful solutions these mindsets are core to human-centered design. The training is based on action-learning teaching approach to guide youth workers towards practical application of the mindsets, principles and good practices.

According to the human-centered design principles we want to discard the myth of success achieved by single individuals for a vision of people working together to build good things. Having this in mind we cooperate with nine organizations from across all Europe to aid us in our mission to provide practical skills for transformative change.

• • Duration of the project: 24 months (1st February, 2020 – 31st January, 2022)