Excerpt from Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Molly Rose Kaufman, and Aubrey Murdock's essay “The Aesthetics of Equity: A Magic Strategy for the Healthy City” about the innovative urban renewal efforts in the city of Orange, New Jersey.
After Hurricanes Dolly and Ike left many families in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande Valley with damaged housing, a team of designers, policy makers, community developers, and organizers worked with the communities to foster social, cultural, and economic resilience. Two of these individuals, Juanita Valdez-Cox, Executive Director, LUPE (La Unión Del Pueblo Entero), and Brent Brown,...
Ron Rivera- Coordinator of Ceramic Water Filter and International Projects, Potters for Peace
Paul Polak, Founder, International Development Enterprises
Designers, engineers, students and professors, architects, and social entrepreneurs from all over the globe are devising cost-effective ways to increase access to food and water, energy, education, healthcare, revenue-generating activities, and affordable transportation for those who most need them. And an increasing number of initiatives are providing solutions for underserved populations in developed countries such...
I had the pleasure of meeting recently with Ton Vriens, a Dutch documentary filmmaker and journalist who, through his foundation Turtle Tree, is working with women in Haiti to develop a felt-making co-operative, with the goal of achieving economic and social independence for the members of the self-governed group. Haiti is one of the poorest...
Follow my field research chronicles on twitter, starting in Kumasi, Ghana at the International Development Design Summit organized by Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and MIT. The summit aims to create equity in the distribution of research and development resources by focusing on the needs of the world’s poor, bringing together students,...
International Development Enterprises’ founder Paul Polak has just released his much anticipated book Out of Poverty, What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail. Based on his 25 years of experience he tells why traditional poverty eradication programs have fallen short and how his alternative approach works. Paul’s work and dedication to developing practical design solutions that...
