Empowered Design

As Empowered Design is a newly founded organization, we aim to utilise the Elevate Prize to develop a sustainable funding mechanism, ensuring we are not solely reliant on grants. We are currently in the process of developing long term agreements with organizations who have the ability to provide funding, such as UNDP, UN SDSN and Ashoka. We are in the pilot phase with regional hubs of these organizations and would utilise the funding money to ensure we have an operations team best able to manage these relationships, so that these organizations would be willing to support us with some form of monetary funding. The Elevate Prize will also allow us to reach out and create relationships with other large NGOs, enhancing our ability to develop a sustainable funding mechanism.

We have also entered into arrangements with Australian and Singaporean high schools, whereby students will participate in Empowered Design projects as part of their assessments, with designs being sent to nonprofits. The Prize funding will be utilised to reach out to further schools to initiate pilot phases, and to assist in packaging and selling the program as another means of obtaining financial sustainability.

The motivation behind my philanthropic endeavours stem from my time in poverty-stricken Malawi with a menstrual health social enterprise in late 2019, where I witnessed the fundamental abuse of human rights endured by many. Hearing devastating tales from indigent Malawian village girls kindled a yearning to combat intergenerational destitution, impoverishment and malnutrition. This heart-wrenching experience, coupled with my academic interest in religion’s capacity to proliferate social dissensions compelled me to collaborate with the solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) to support their No Peace Without Women’s Rights in Afghanistan campaign. While promoting the inclusion of women in Afghani peace talks I became aware of the incredible social endeavours undertaken by grassroots non-profits within the Global South and in turn, their inability to effectively communicate their altruistic undertakings. Impassioned by the commitment and devotion of so many who strive help the impoverished, I founded Empowered Design, an organisation that provides pro-bono design services to other nonprofits and social enterprises by leverage the skills of design students. Through Empowered Design, I hope to develop the largest network of designers supporting social impact organisations in the world.

Empowered Design is an organisation that provides pro-bono design services to nonprofits to bring about greater social and environmental change. We achieve this by working with design students who are eager to gain experience working with real-world clients and design for social impact.

 Many nonprofits around the world don’t have the resources to afford a designated design and communications team, and on average, design firms or freelance designers may charge organisations $420-$700 for just a logo. This issue is felt by social impact organisations world-wide, however we have noticed this problem to be most predominate in the Global South, where grassroots nonprofits have even less access to resources. Menstrual Health Hub reported that almost half their network of organisations stated that they needed help with marketing and communications. Empowered Design enables organisations to better achieve their mission through effective design materials, without having to sacrifice their resources.

 Beyond this, we recruit volunteer students studying graphic design at university, connecting them with nonprofits to create the design materials. Whilst simultaneously solving this resource problems for nonprofits, the designers are also able to gain real experience working on a design brief and expand their portfolio, beneficial to their future careers.

We are the first organization to provide pro-bono design services to nonprofits. Our unique ‘win-win’ strategy, whereby we not only assist nonprofits making global impact, but also provide our designers with an opportunity to expand their creative experience, allows us to offer a free service that cannot be matched by other marketing agencies.

Our proposed high school project also provides younger students the opportunity to engage with developmental issues which they would otherwise not be exposed to. We believe that increasing awareness of critical issues such as period poverty, malnutrition and lack of education will encourage students to consider continued involvement with other nonprofits and charities. We aim to direct students’ energy that would have been put towards fictitious design briefs in their classes towards real issues, where the designs they create will be utilised by nonprofits and contribute to social justice and bettering the environment.

Empowered Design has a multifaceted impact on humanity. Effective communication is crucial to boosting many nonprofits’ social impact. By providing design services that were previously unaffordable, we are able to expand the reach and growth of these small grassroots organizations. Based on the number of projects that we have undertaken thus far, we estimate that we have saved nonprofits approximately $14,000 in design services, demonstrating our impact to organizations in need.

Furthermore, in assisting nonprofits by minimising their expenditure on design services, we have empowered these organizations to better support their respective regions and communities. Through our capacity to provide strong and effective communications material, we are increasing advocacy, raising awareness of social issues in communities and supporting the Sustainable Development Goals. Thus far, some of our work to support humanity include; assisting the development of a safe space in Malaysia and Kazakhstan for the transgender community, preventing period poverty in Africa and India, promoting women’s rights in Cambodia and raising awareness for mental health in Zimbabwe.

Attached is an example of our work; schoolgirls in Ghana reading our “Periods During Exams” poster (Girls Flow Free) and girls in India learning about menstruation with designs we put together (RSKS India).