Design for Change

Design for Change is committed to enabling children around the world to identify and tackle challenges practices within their communities and localities.Children in most parts of the world are denied agency in their, they face the brunt of contemporary challenges - climate change, social violence, and now, the pandemic, but are rarely considered capable of constructive contribution.At DFC using our transformative, design thinking transformation pedagogy of Feel-Imagine-Do-Share, children have been able to solve very complex problems. From preventing child marriages, fixing potholes, building safe biking paths thereby proving that they can ‘design’ a better future. The Elevate prize will open up for us a threefold opportunity in partnerships, scale and sustainability to reach 1 billion children by 2030 across 110 countries. DFC routes its programs through partnerships around the globe - empowering 2 million children, across 60 countries. Strategic marketing and media expertise from the Prize will enable us to forge new partnerships and expand our impact.To tackle challenges presented by the pandemic - we will prototype and run pilot projects to design a robust online avatar of the DFC program.Mentorship from the Elevate program will help us develop performance metrics and conduct impact studies for future sustainability and growth.

Kiran Bir Sethi is a graduate of Program of Graphic Designing from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Disillusioned by her son’s experience in his school, she entered the field of education. The prevalent scenario was impersonal, bound by content and devoid of choice. She re-imagined education to nurture curiosity, creativity, excellence and interdependence. Her dynamism, a clear vision, design thinking mindset has catapulted her from a teacher, to a reformer, a social entrepreneur and now a thought leader. She first founded the Riverside School in 2001, which became the lab to iterate and refine the practice to show that passion and compassion can be intentionally crafted. In 2009, she collaborated with friends in IDEO and the d.school, Stanford, together they distilled the Riverside approach and used design thinking principles to craft our 4 step framework to help any child find agency and purpose. Over the years DFC has been honoured with several awards and recognition for instance the Reimagine education award (2020), HundrEd (2019/20/21) Lego Reimagine learning (2015), Asia Game Changer (2015) etc.Our goal is to highlight the power of the framework and make it the DNA for student agency by partnering with organisations, governments and allies in this mission.

Children in many parts of the world are denied agency in their own lives and also within the public sphere.Problems are worse for children from marginalised backgrounds.UNESCO estimates that over 1.6 billion children were affected by school closures in 2020 and the majority of children in developing countries have lost almost an entire year of schooling.DFC helps shift and amplify the voices of children across countries and borders to unleash the I CAN superpower in every child.DFC has been recognised as one of the action steps by GlobalGoals.org to address the Global Goal-4 Quality education.DFC operates through a partnership model where like-minded partners from different countries are on-boarded, the framework is offered free of cost making the program completely inclusive.The countrypartners are supported by training and mentoring.They reach out to schools, provide training and regular support to teachers who works with the children and facilitate their stories of change, thereby growing the impact in their respective countries.In 60 countries,the methodology has been adapted to transform the school ecosystems in incremental and deeply impactful ways. In 2018,DFC was created as a not-for-profit in the US, with a 501(C)3, previously it was supported by Riverside education foundation since it began in 2009.

The most unique feature of Design for Change is that it is not only simple, it is open-source, contextual and inclusive! The framework encourages children to 'Feel'-about an issue that bothers them, 'Imagine' –ways to make it better, 'Do'-take action, 'Share'-their story of change with the world to inspire others!. DFC introduced design thinking for children when it was not a part of the mainstream thought or language. We used design thinking, not as it was perceived, for designing products, but as a framework for children to build a mindset of optimism and collaboration. Also, unlike the teacher driven method of ‘project based’ learning – DFC encouraged teachers to step back, listen and trust the child.  This approach, though common sense, was not common practice and that was disruptive and unique. Children as young as 6 years of age are solving day to day problems they face as individuals, as a family or as a community. Teachers start believing that children are not helpless and that change is possible and children can drive it. The annual ‘BE THE CHANGE’ Conference by the children, of the children, and for the children, is a platform for showcasing the inspiring stories of change.

As per the world economic forum, the job market in 2025 will see an increased demand not only for the 21st century skills, like Empathy, Critical Thinking and Leadership but also with the pandemic the new emerging skills like active learning, resilience, stress tolerance, flexibility will be critical for thriving in a rapidly changing world and stressed world. These skills are currently not being addressed by traditional school curricula whether offline or online mode of delivery. Given that the engagement of a student with the Design for Change program is approximately only 10-12 hours over the course of three months, the impact emerges as very significant that leads to a further improvement in outcomes and learning goals- FIDS is a transferable model - children demonstrate higher creative skills-children learn 21st century skills and attitudes- Teacher involvement improves as facilitators- Students' self-efficacy increases significantly- children become more collaborative. DFC has so far impacted-2 million children from approximately 21,000+ schools, 76000+ teachers, 31,000stories of change in over 65+counties and regions.  Children have addressed 15 of the 17 SDGS addressed more than 45 causes proving that they have what it takes to  ‘design’ a future that is desired

Design For Change (DFC) started in 2009 in India to inculcate the design thinking approach in students and teachers. Today DFC Global along with DFC Partners operate in 60 countries. Some key DFC statistics:

-       Year 1 “I Can School Challenge”: 1 country, 800 schools, 1,000 teachers, 40,000 students

-       2009-2020: Grew to 60 countries, 40,000 schools, 75,000 teachers, 2 million students

-       DFC Global: 2 full time and 2 part time staff

-       DFC Partners: 60 partners, 210 staff members

-       Most Active Countries: India, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Spain, Taiwan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, USA

-       2020, The Pandemic Year: The “Do Good From Home” challenge launched by DFC USA and Hasbro brought in solutions from 30,000 children. UNICEF and DFC conducted the YuWaah Youth Challenge 2020 (www.yuwaah.org), bringing in 1019 solutions from 3,000 children across 24 states in India.

-       In a year, DFC on an average serves 3,300 schools, 6,200 teachers and 1,60,000 students.

The DFC promise: Every child must believe, TODAY, “I am not helpless”, “Change is possible” and “I CAN drive it”.

DFC’s mission is to empower children to believe through its FIDS (Feel, Imagine, Do, Share) framework. DFC’s material is open source.

DFC’s vision for 2030 is to impact 1 billion children globally. This requires a non-linear scaling strategy to achieve the 500x multiplier.

COVID-19 has indirectly helped DFC pivot beyond the school and explore more direct avenues to bring FIDS to the child. The “Do Good From Home” campaign by DFC USA and Hasbro, and UNICEF+DFC YuWaah Youth Challenge 2020 have demonstrated this. Going direct is a key strategy for achieving a non-linear scale jump. The focus has now shifted from expanding into countries to working with network partners. Some examples:

-       Begun working with The Catholic school (a network of 4,00,000 schools)

-       Successfully conducted the X-Prize Rainforest Kids challenge (https://rainforest.xprize.org/prizes/rainforest/sponsors)

-       Exploring partnerships with Nat Geo, Walls Icecream and more.

DFC faces three key challenges:

-       Delivery Challenge - Pandemic driven school closure has significantly disrupted DFC activities. DFC partners in many countries have been forced to downsize.

-       Organisational Challenge - The DFC Global team that currently supports partners across 60 countries in addition to activities in India consists of only 2 full time and 2 part time employees.

-       Language Challenge - Translating cross pollinated content from all our partners is perhaps the most significant challenge of them all. DFC doesn’t have the resources to expand its own content as well as content generated by its partners into languages other than English at present.

The Elevate Prize would allow DFC to access a greater network of individuals and organisations to expand DFC’s regional as well as corporate partners.

The prize money would directly benefit capacity building for the core team, create a Catalyst Fund for strengthening its partners and digital infrastructure, and bring a dedicated team in place to cross pollinate all of DFCs content in at least 5 major global languages.

As an education initiative, DFC has great potential to positively impact the world. Building student agency is a process that requires teachers to adopt new teaching methods that combine content and character.  By expanding our reach we will be able to train more educators and therefore reach more students

My credo is “Better Together”. May I put it humbly that after 12 years, it is not only what we know but who we know that will help expand our reach and amplify our impact. The world has shown how flat it is. If COVID has taught us anything, it has been the urgency of the need to collaborate and have collective will to address these issues of inequity, well being and agency. Collaborations will be the key strategy going forward.

The Elevate Prize shall, above all, offer us greater credibility to realise our vision of “2030:1Billion”. teachers We cannot do this alone. A more extensive platform and greater brand recognition would expose us in more educational networks and to more We would look forward to drawing inspiration and new approaches from synergies forged via the Elevate Prize’s network.

DFC’s leadership has to be viewed from two lenses:

-       Leadership for an idea

-       Leadership for the team 

DFC as an idea was designed to work at scale in India. The DFC toolkit was designed keeping language, reach, economics and DIY in mind. DFC, by design, has spared no effort making its toolkit accessible to anyone who sought it - Open Source material provided with no participation fees. The toolkit was first made available in 11 Indic languages, reaching the most rural corners of India. And as evidence, 50% of the solutions came from rural India. And therefore the FIDS framework was able to address diversity, equity and inclusion.

On an organisational front, our Board members are from 8 countries. Our partners are from every continent. Our materials are available in 17 languages. As evidence of our diversity, equity and inclusion some partners are from ‘rival’ countries and yet work together keeping the benefit of the child in mind. And our users range from 6 to 60 years old!

 My personal leadership mantras have been “Moral Authority, Simplicity, Autonomy, Competency above Hierarchy and Open To All” with a healthy dose of Shamelessness, Stamina and Sense of Humour.

DFC has always operated as a lean and agile organisation. Its flexible design thinking framework allowed the Riverside School (DFC’s home ground) to pivot its pedagogy during the COVID lockdowns and shift towards a parent teacher partnership in a matter of weeks.

The FIDS framework has been iterated over 20 years with the Riverside School where it began as a living lab.  We continue to test, evolve and refine our approach before we share it with the rest of the world.

Our partners have expanded FIDS beyond DFC into designing and implementing their own curricula across all subjects. FIDS has become its own pedagogy, transforming education from “Teacher Told Me” to “I CAN” and equipping children with a sense of agency and urgency to serve the greater good.

We have the results. We have confidence. We have the ability to impact 1 billion students. Increased funding will enable us to onboard more partners and develop relations with more organisations . It will enable us to hire a CEO who can fundraise and strategize our capacities to reach our goal of empowering children around the world to say I CAN. We are looking for a jump in orbit.

Children from over 40 countries poured into Rome in November 2019 to celebrate the first ever, multi-faith, inclusive 'I CAN Children's Global Summit'. More than 2,500 of these young superheroes, aged 7-17, were the protagonists of this inspiring four-day event filled with celebration, creativity and sharing, that culminated in a special private audience with Pope Francis inside Vatican City's Aula Paula VI Hall.

This was achieved by a small 5 member team in less than 6 months.  We did not have the funding, did not speak the language and did not have any ‘boots’ on the ground. It really was a test and triumph of my own personal and the team’s I CAN spirit, unending optimism and comfort with uncertainty. To keep the team and the country partners focussed on the larger goal and infuse the tough days with joy and purpose was a role that ( while it comes naturally to me ) had to be ramped up a hundred times! It was all worth it when one saw the Aula filled with children who were communicating with each other with the language of love and laughter!

This is a partial list:

●      Kiran Bir Sethi-Kids Take Charge (the 2010 TED talk that went viral)

●      Edutopia - Kiran Bir Sethi

●      LEGO Design for Change A Champion of Learning

●      2018 Global Leadership Awards

●      Global Teacher Prize

●      Superheroes of Education Episode

●      Eduheroes create superheroes - trt world

●      Entrevista - Kiran Bir Sethi

●      https://www.ashoka.org/en-in/f...

●      BBVA - yo puedo (went viral in Spain)

●      https://atlasofthefuture.org/p...

The Elevate Prize money shall be used as follows:

a catalyst for our operations which will enable us to expand our core team, including a CEO who can fundraise, new members in the team that can develop content, translation of materials into 5 major languages and outreach.   

-       50% towards capacity building - expand our full time core team,

-       20% towards creating a Catalyst Fund for our DFC partners,

-       10% towards digital infrastructure

-       10% towards dedicated translation efforts into 5 major global languages, and

-       10% towards outreach

●      National Geographic - working on a potential challenge that will engage children in projects that make the world and wildlife more sustainable

●      Worlds Largest Lesson - promote the use of the Sustainable Development Goals in learning so that children can contribute to a better future for all. From citizenship and justice to climate change and the environment, inspire children to make a difference! It is a strategic collaboration around the 17 Global Goals set by the UN in 2015 to improve life on earth  by the year 2030.

●      X Prize -XPRIZE is a non-profit organisation that designs and hosts public competitions intended to encourage technological development to benefit humanity.

●      IDEO - knowledge partner. IDEO is a design and consulting firm founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company uses the design thinking approach to design products, services, environments, and digital experiences.

●      Teach For All - strategic partnership. Teach For All is a global network of 60 independent, locally led and funded partner organisations whose stated shared mission is to "expand educational opportunity around the world by increasing and accelerating the impact of social enterprises that are cultivating the leadership necessary for change."