Today is the last chance for designers, innovators and other creative thinkers to enter their ideas for the WDCD Refugee Challenge. You have till midnight CET, and if you’ve postponed your entry until the last moment you are not the only one: entries are literally coming in by the minute.
On this last day some 30 designers, entrepreneurs, students and others gather in Stockholm for a workshop of 12 hours that must lead to even more great ideas to be added to the competition. The Design Workshop, initiated by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in cooperation with Transformator Design and What Design Can Do, aims to provide participants with the tools and knowledge needed to submit ideas to the challenge. In the course of the 12 hours, participants will learn about service design, interview refugees and come up with bold new ideas to improve refugees’ lives.
Not for designers alone
‘Everyone who flees from war, violence or persecution deserves shelter, respect and solidarity. UNHCR has engaged Transformator Design to help us arrange a 12-hour workshop open to anyone who feels they want to contribute to the refugee challenge,’ said Karolina Lindholm Billing, Deputy Regional Representative for UNHCR Northern Europe.
The workshop is not necessarily for designers alone, Martin Hanberger, Senior Service Designer at Transformator Design says. ‘We don’t think you need to be a designer to be creative. All we ask of participants is that they have an open mind, are curious and show empathy. We will guide them through a design-based approach and help them to come up with their ideas. We also think that the best innovations are based on the users’ needs. We will visit refugee centres in Stockholm to make sure that the ideas are based on the experiences and needs of refugees in Northern Europe today.’
Ideas from 30 countries
WDCD’s Challenge leader Dagan Cohen, who will kick off the Stockholm workshop, in the meantime is overjoyed with the huge amount of entries already contributed to the Refugee Challenge. ‘It is fantastic to see that so many designers from more than 30 different countries have made an effort to ease in one way or another the lives of refugees and asylum seekers. In this workshop, and similar ones in Istanbul, we are actively gathering the world wide creative community to develop even more great ideas.’
As from tomorrow, anyone who registers on the Refugee Challenge platform can help to improve the ideas that have been entered by sharing their comments and suggestions for improvement until 29 May. Next, the contributors will get time to adjust and improve their proposals before these will be made final. A group of experts will then select the shortlist, while people who registered on the platform can nominate projects too. Ultimately the international Refugee Challenge jury will judge the projects on the shortlist and pick out the five winners.
Top image: Refugee Challenge Workshop, Stockholm © Transformator Design