Having grown up in a middle class family in India, this came as a shock to me – 88% of women in India do not have access to sanitary napkins. They resort to using rags, ashes, newspaper, dried leaves and husk according to a study by AC Nielsen. According to an article in Fastcoexist, girls who attain puberty in rural areas miss school or drop out because of their periods. As a result of unhygienic practices, more than 70% of the women suffer from reproductive tract infections, increasing the risk of contracting associated cancers according to Guardian.

Arunachalam Muruganantham, a workshop helper who lived below poverty line in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu had other plans for sanitary towels. He has created a low cost machine for making sanitary napkins. He wanted to make a low cost napkin for his wife who couldn’t afford to buy any. Creating this machine has been an arduous process for Arunachalam. He tried to get feedback from his wife and sisters who refused to discuss his creations. He approached female medical students who weren’t responsive as well. Discussing your menstrual cycle with a stranger wasn’t something any woman that Arunachalam approached was ready to do. He was experimenting with cotton at the time. At his wits end, he did some usability testing by wearing it himself and using a bladder and tube contraption to release goats blood onto his creation.

He tested different materials over the course of two years and figured that the napkins were made from cellulose from the bark of a tree. After getting some samples of the raw material from various companies, he figured out how to make the napkins. He realized that creating cellulose from pine wood fibre was no simple task. The machine needed to do that was close to half a million dollars hence the dominance of big companies in the sanitary napkin market. It took Arunachalam 4 years to create a cheaper machine to do the same task. The machine could make 1000 napkins a day. The machine was awarded the best innovation for the betterment of society by the Institute of Technology in Chennai.  The napkins cost $0.25 (13 rupees) for a package of eight.

Women using Arunachalam's creation to make low cost sanitary pads.

Arunachalam doesn’t sell his product commercially. He provides sustainable livelihood to many rural women. His company helps rural women buy one of the $2500 machines through a loan. Around 600 machines are installed across 23 states. The idea is to create small industries all over India run by women creating a product that helps women. Arunachalam created a revolution around a topic that is considered a taboo. This system driven model will hopefully create a change in the way Indian women view hygiene and health.

References

As the buying power of the Indian consumer grows in the coming years, it is time that they start making educated choices about what they are consuming. The market is flooded with products from all kinds of producers that clumps mass produced industry made products with the ones produced by the fast dwindling race of artisans and craft persons. A lot of the products made by artisans are sold by middlemen who raise the prices of handmade items. So even though we might pick up those handcrafted chai cups thinking that the handsome sum we are putting down is going to  somehow reach the potter who so deftly whipped up the these cups, it will essentially land up in some oily middleman’s pocket.

Here is where we look for the items with fair trade certification. Fair trade is a social movement that promotes paying fair prices to the artisans and farmers or simply the maker of the goods and reinforces good and safe working environment and sustainable trading practices. It also kicks out the oily middlemen. The International Resources for Fairer Trade (IRFT) is a non profit organization that was founded in India in 1995. IRFT gives farmers and artisans direct access to the mainstream market. They set up an Not for Profit company called Shop for Change in collaboration with Traidcraft Exchange from the UK. Shop for Change has four main functions – certification, business services, producer services and awareness raising. The Shop for Change Mark means that when you buy a product with that certified mark, the product is ethically and environmentally sourced and the farmer or the artisan is receiving a fairer deal for the product.

Fair Trade is a concept that is well known to the western consumers but is picking up slowly but surely in India. Recently the entire cast and crew of a Bollywood movie called “Turning 30” pledged their support to fair trade and have been seen in the recent weeks wearing ‘Turning 30′ T-Shirts made from Shop for Change Fair Trade certified cotton. Globally consumers spent $4.1 billion on Fair Trade products in 2008. Fair trade has a ready market in India with its huge unorganized sector where even small retailers can make use of this system and get just returns. Corporation in India are looking at Fair trade and the possibilities that it creates. IRFT already has brand partners like Levis Strauss, Nike, Marks and Spencer, Reebok and Burberry. The most recent campaign by IRFT and Shop for Change, with a NGO in Netherlands called Hivos is the Pro Sustain campaign that shows business houses the profitability of buying Fair Trade both for its internal use as well as retail.

The first fair Shop for Change product was cotton and clothes designed from it by designer Anita Dongre. Then in November 2010, fair trade mango, cashew nuts and amla products were also introduced. The other organization that swears by fair trade are the blind weavers of Grameen Shramik Pratishthan in Latur. They made Rs 1,03,000 in the Kala Ghoda festival in five days versus two months they would ordinarily take to make that amount of money. Design shops like Baaya Design Studio that creates home decor items from folk art and crafts for urban buyers also use the Fair Trade label since it conveys their social agenda and pricing to the consumers without further explanation.

In a country with such a rich legacy of indigenous products and one of the fastest growing economies and buying power, Fair Trade is an inevitable trade practice. Even though there is an active criticism of fair trade as a practice that impedes growth and doesn’t adequately challenge the current trading system, it is a system with its own ideals and principles and we can see atleast the Indians nodding in unison to affirm the fact that we need Indian artisans and farmers to get their share and prosper in national and international markets sooner than later.

Shop for Change Blog

Jyoti Hosagrahar is faculty at Columbia University, New York and Director of Sustainable Urbanism International at Columbia University, and Bangalore, India. Architect, planner, and historian, she advises on urban development, historic conservation, and sustainability issues in Asia. Her research interests include urban heritage, cultural and environmental sustainability of cities focusing on the intersections of nature, culture, and the built environment, and postcolonial perspectives in design and planning. She serves as an expert for UNESCO on historic cities.

Hosagrahar is the author of Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (Architext Series, Routledge, 2005) awarded a 2006 book prize by the International Planning History Society. At Columbia she teaches courses on urban sustainability and postcolonial perspectives on non-Western architecture and urbanism. Recently, Hosagrahar has been extensively involved in the conservation and sustainable development of historic cities in India in partnership with UNESCO. She is directing the preparation of an integrated site management plan for the conservation and sustainable development of the heritage of the Hoysala towns in Karnataka.

Sustainable Urbanism International’s minimalist design and planning interventions aim to enhance local economic development, while enabling local populations to express their historically derived placed-based identities. SUI is involved in a range of studies, policies, and design interventions for historic townships through extensive community and stakeholder consultations. With Sustainable Urbanism International in partnership with The Energy Resource Institute, India, Hosagrahar has coauthored, ‘An Exploration of Sustainability in the Provision of Basic Urban Services in Indian Cities’. (TERI, 2009).

Stay tuned for Part -2 of Jyoti’s video where she discusses Indigenous Modernities. We will release that shortly.

Anab Jain is a designer and a TED Fellow, interested in creating stories that lead us towards new, alternate futures. Educated in India, Vienna and London, she is the Founder of Superflux, a design practice working at the intersection of people and technology.

She created ‘The Power of 8’ a collaborative project to imagine alternate, optimistic futures. Most recently she was working on a project called 5th Dimensional Camera that explores the wider implications of living in a world with quantum physics. Her recent talk called ‘My Elastic City – Designing for India’s immaterial urbanism’ at the World Congress for Information technology revolved around soft urbanism in India.

The recipient of Award of Excellence ICSID, UNESCO Digital Arts Award, and Grand Prix Geneva Human Rights Festival, Anab has also presented her work at MoMA, NY, Apple Computers Inc, LIFT and SIGGRAPH.

This video footage was recorded on skype so please bear with the quality. Thanks!

On May 26th, I attended a workshop on ‘Funding for Social Change‘ organized by WorldStudio at SVA. Andrea Pellegrino is a business partner at WorldStudio with Mark Randall. She orchestrated the workshop and it was very useful for people who are taking baby steps towards building projects that are socially responsible and don’t necessarily have client funding. Andrea ran us through a few basics. Worldstudio Inc is one such rare design shop that works on socially responsible communication design and branding projects.

Traditionally such social design work has always be done under the umbrella of -
Non Profit Organizations
Civic Authorities
Probono Work
Corporate Responsibility Programs

So the question raised was how does one fund socially responsible non client based initiatives when it does not fall under any of the above categories. The questions thus explored were funding, developing ideas, creating communication plans, developing a budget and gauging the return on investment.

Funding models for such projects could be sourced to –
Grants (Eg Sappi Grants)
Donations (Eg Project M-425)
Integrated solutions (Toms Shoes)
Sponsorship (Tribeca Film Festival)

Getting started on a project and keeping it going -
What is your passion and what drives you?
Start small – Small acts inspire big ideas.
Be realistic – Assess your situation.
Float the idea – Confirm viability and interest.
Find partners, build a collaboration – Dont try & do it alone.
Leverage your relationships – Start with who you know.
Develop a communications plan – Build support for your idea.
Create a project document – Tools to engage your sponsors and partners.
Funding sources – Research, Research, Research
Be Flexible – Allow for changes in your concept.

Methodology -
Indirect – Raise money for local charity you like.
Concrete – Open your home to a homeless person.
Visionary – Look towards the future and create something long term.
Commentary – Create an installation that deals with a social subject.

Communication plan -
Who are you trying to reach?
Will you engage subcontractors?
Website.
Traditional Advertising – Print, TV, Radio, Mailers.
Editorial Outreach.
Social Media.
Collaboration.
Multimedia.
Collateral.
Involving partners in media plan.

Project budget -
Hard costs
Development time
Execution time
Risk as a percentage – 10 to15 %
Potential for in-kind donations

Return on Investment -
Reflects value
Creates social impact
Potential for PR activation
Interacts with key markets

The second half of the workshop was more hands-on The group was split into a bunch of smaller groups. Each group was given an idea and was asked to apply the above stated list onto the idea to make it real. The sequence of the process entailed coming up a concrete idea or concept, and then creating a communications plan and budget for it. Personally for me, things suddenly felt doable. There seemed to be definite plan of action in place. One thing Andrea stressed about a lot was putting the time spent on the project in the budget or accounting for your time. Amongst other nuggets of amazing information was a great group of people. It was truly inspiring to be in that room. There was a sense of community and love for social design. Things that will only grow with time as more of such projects get funded. For more details on this workshop, don’t hesitate to contact me on shagunster@gmail.com.

Other projects by WorldStudio inc -
Design Ignites Change
The Urban Forest Project

For some of us who grew up back home in India, we understand the perils of living in an unplanned city. Dodgy transportation system, consistent power cuts, inefficient waste disposal and sewage systems, gridlocked roads and a broken, corrupt bureaucratic government. People develop ways around problems. They adjust. The idea is to work the system in order to get maximum returns from it. It is tough to think of rebuilding or fixing this broken system since living in that system, if one is not rich or if one doesn’t work for the government, is such an ordeal.

This is an excerpt from a recently published article in the NY times. The writer is Akash Kapur – “Between now and 2030, the report (a Mckinsey report ) estimates, 250 million Indians will migrate to the cities, a figure that exceeds the current total population of all but three countries (China, India and the United States). As a result, India will have 68 cities with populations of more than one million (compared with 35 in all of Europe today)…….”Like much of the country, cities suffer from the legal ambiguity, rampant corruption, political infighting and institutional inertia that block even the most enlightened policies and policy makers.”

Are we equipped to deal with this influx when the cities cannot even handle the numbers that live in them right now? What if the policy makers have a way of getting round the government and mobilize the people instead? What if they can develop a community and network of people genuinely committed to changing the system or atleast identifying the problems within it, in an analytical fashion. I came across ijanaagraha today – an online platform to initiate community building to create change.

A cut and paste from their about section says – “The iJanaagraha portal envisions a huge online networking community that is committed to urban issues – electoral and civic. It aims to initiate change, build networks of communities & local civic bodies, provide data on urban issues, civic awareness & training – all of this at a local neighbourhood level. With the relevant information presented intelligently through use of simple interactive MAPS and a powerful platform to ACT, we aim to inspire everyone to get out and grab opportunities, participate in campaigns, events and community projects and become an Active Citizen in our society.”

The number of people using this portal to connect to others and identifying problems is unknown. However the fact that a step has been taken in the direction of using the internet or the online community to mobilize change is a powerful one. Another great example is FixmyCity.com. FixMyStreet is a site to help people report, view, or discuss local problems they’ve found to their local council by simply locating them on a map. This is UK based application. It launched in early February 2007. The various projects under DIYCity initiative are a step towards using the internet to improve civic services and urban problems in NYC. The government initiated ‘Dial 311′ is a great way for the public to get in touch with the New York City services and information also.

The democratization of the internet has allowed a number of grassroot level initiatives to take off and create substantial change in the way governments are run and cities evolve. India, with its abundance of people and knowledge needs to use this medium effectively and to its advantage.

Incase you haven’t discovered the difference in the writing style – from well put together prose to someone writing a personal diary, here is the revelation. I am the person who does the videos and not the writing. That said, Ria is on vacation and will be back soon.

This morning I woke up and was thinking of the next groundbreaking idea that changes the world (I do that occasionally). I thought of the shortest way of getting design for the emerging world really on its feet. Here is a list of things from my diary this morning -

1. Go places
2. Meet with NGO’s
3. Offer them your awesome design help
4. Come back wherever home is for you
5. Raise money for the project from the great crowd-sourcing tools out there
6. Employ people
7. Get the project on its feet
8. See lots of smiling faces and then turn the whole thing into an award winning documentary.
9. Win an award

If you are thinking of stealing this idea, you are late in the game. Kopernik partially does those things and does them even better (other than the film part). Instead of going all over the world looking for projects and spending your wives hard earned money, they have a grassroots approach to the problem. The NGO’s are encouraged to submit proposals for the technological and design help they need. These proposals are assessed by the donors. Kopernik raises funds for the chosen organizations through crowd-funding. Once the funds have been raised, the proposal is handed over to the technology providers, who manufacture the product and ship it to the users. On implementation, the recipients have to report back on the use of the technology/product/ design in use.

The whole service seems flawless but when I look at the fund-raising page, it seems that they have a long way to go. That said, Kopernik seems to be in good hands. It was started by World Bank and UN Development Fund alums Ewa Wojkowska and Toshihiro Nakamura. This model eliminates the top down approach of the traditional aid agencies and promotes more grassroots level, bottoms up approach of getting design and technology to the right people.

For designers wanting to step into the social realm, it does make one elephant size problem really simple – that of distribution. By giving the reins of decision making into the hands of the organizations that work within the community, the process becomes more streamlined and evolved and gives all of us some hope.

Here is one of their success stories

For more information on them – http://www.thekopernik.org/

I visited Paris in the summer of 2007. After spending a couple of weeks of learning french and reading the lonely planet, I was prepared for a week or two of intense historical, cultural and architectural overdose. Everything was pretty much as imagined except the law that allows one to open a bottle of wine, out in the open in a park, something that is a huge taboo in New York. Another great thing to see was the Velib bikes – a public bicycle rental program. My credit card somehow didn’t work with the system but I discovered later that one can also buy a 1 to 7 day Velib card over the internet. A similar New York bike share project summer pilot was launched in 2008 and was quickly wrapped up. I haven’t seen anything since.

Today, as I worked on the projects that pay my bills and simultaneously scanned my reader for some inspiration, a project called FreMo caught my eye – A bikeshare program in India. A couple of things did go through my mind as I scanned their websites for the deliverable and information. India is a country packed with two wheelers. Is there a need for such a service? Even if there is, the idea of taking out credit, borrowing, sharing and leasing things are not quite culturally ingrained or accepted. Also, the country seems to be accelerating in terms of per capita income of the middle class. People have more spending power. More and more college grads prefer to drive cars vs scooters and bicycles. In such a backdrop, I am glad someone thought of FreMo and opened up an option that we are conveniently negating. The option of leaving our cars behind, reducing congestion on the narrow, badly maintained roads and reducing pollution in cities full of smog is surely a welcome sign. I hope that it gets deployed. For Rs 499 lifetime membership, it seems like something I would use.

Here is more on FreMo. “FreMo” is a division of Ecomove Solutions Pvt Ltd

What is this competition about?
This competition is focused on design solutions that can change our immediate urban environment into places that we can truly inhabit. The first series of ‘The Grand Idea Initiative’ is called ‘INHABIT‘. The ultimate challenge of which is to create solutions that introduce fun, sustainable, and innovative ways people use public space. The intervention can be components that are spatial, graphical, digital or purely strategic. These ideas have to be US $1000 in budget and need to maximize the return in the shape of a built design solution.

Who should apply?
Anyone – You could be an architect, designer, a mad scientist, a housewife, a student or anyone else interested in making cool stuff for public spaces.

What kind of projects can be submitted?
Projects could be aimed at designing street furniture, environmental graphics, services, online communities, anything that changes peoples behavior to how a public space gets utilized.

Submission requirements
A photograph of the Site – The place of your intervention, preferably in your neighborhood
The Proposal – A 100 word design brief describing your project.
The Design – Your proposal in a visual format, e.g. sketches, drawings, photo collages, anything that clearly outlines what you propose to do.
The Budget & Timeline – Breakdown of the usage of the US $1000. A tentative installation/implementation timeline.

Please send all these requirements in a letter size PDF format. The number of pages in the PDF document should not exceed more that 4 pages.

What is the budget?
US $1000

Selection process
The selection of the final project will be based on creativity, innovative thinking, maximum impact and practical plan for implementation.

Our judges are -

Raul Correa Smith
Co-founder, FAISCAS
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture, Columbia University GSAPP

Raul Corrêa-Smith is a co-founder of Faiscas, a two-way cultural exchange channel geared towards boosting the architectural imagination between New York and Rio de Janeiro. Established in 2009 through Columbia University’s Graduate School for Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), Faiscas is an evolving hub for the facilitation of such exchanges. Raul earned his BA from the Taubman School of Architecture at the University of Michigan in 1998 and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University’s GSAPP in 2002 with Honors for Excellence in Design. Born in New York City and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Raul currently resides in NYC where he works at Studio Daniel Libeskind and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia’s GSAPP.

Soo-in Yang
Co-Founder of The Living

Soo-in Yang created The Living with David Benjamin in 2004. Using an open-source, collaborative approach, the architecture firm designs both handheld interfaces and urban-sized buildings. Work by The Living has received multiple international awards and has been exhibited and published widely. Their current projects include a 50,000 square meter mixed-use development in New Jersey, and a floating network of pods in New York’s rivers that sense water quality and presence of fish, then display a cloud of light that changes colors according to environmental conditions. Yang graduated from Yonsei University with a BE in Architectural Engineering and received Master of Architecture degrees from Columbia University. Yang teaches at Pratt Institute and at Columbia University, where he is the co-director of the Living Architecture Lab.

Where should the entries be sent?
Send your PDF attachments to agrandidea@designwala.org. Please include your name and contact information in the body of the email as well as on the PDF document. The subject line should be “Inhabit Competition Submission”.

Important Dates
Inhabit Competition kicks off – May 17th 2010
Deadline for Submissions – June 17th 2010
Winners Announced – July 17th 2010

For more information
Contact us at info@designwala.org

This competition would not have been possible without the generous contributions from these amazing people and friends :
Ravisharon Kaur
Ramakrishnan Subramanian
Rahul Pande
Kiran Kannacheri
Saravanakumar Velayudham
Sameer Kumar
Keerthik Sasidharan
Saad Tabani
Ritwik Dey
Giana Gonzalez
Sonali Sridhar
Jairam Ranganathan
Amit Desai
Priyanka Gupta
Shweta Mudgal

Other things to keep in mind
* This competition is open to people from all countries
* Since public intervention laws are different in different countries, please choose sites that have the potential to grow without   upsetting any stringent legality.
* The project money is NOT prize money but money to build something small and useful

About the Grand Idea Initiative
A Grand Idea Initiative is a 5 part series competition – INHABIT, LEARN, ORGANIZE, HEAL & SUSTAIN. The rest of the competitions will take place as soon as we raise the prize money for them.

Watch the trailer for ‘The Grand Idea Initiative’.

Jinal Shah is a digital strategist and works for Electric Artists in NYC. She describes herself as a thinker, writer and storyteller and jots down her thoughts in her blog - Constant Beta. She also started a blog called Dsplaced that aggregates stories from people and talks about their sense of displacement from home and country. She spoke to Designwala about innovation in India through incremental change. She also talks about examples where storytelling has been used in education, women’s empowerment and social change.