Sustainable Innovation for Chile

Week by week, and drop by drop, twelve students from the Art Center College of Design are working towards social change. In partnership with Un Techo Para Mi Pais, the students develop new tools for using, storing, and transporting water to improve the quality of life of impoverished families living in campamentos/slums in Chile. In week 8 we joinned KC and Jackie and witnessed how they innovated on the creation of a low-cost kitchen workstation for washing dishes indoors and facilitating the re-use of water.  This week, join Ramon and Will and follow step by step how they innovate a strategy for sharing and inspiring social innovation by people in the campamentos.

Encouraging Innovation and Quality of Life

Innovative solutions exist among local people of slums/campamentos.  Some are shared, but most people don't know what their neighbors have come up with.  This is why Ramon and Will have committed to enabling access to solutions that will improve quality of life.  The goal is to inspire innovations for a real sustainable social change in campamentos, but also to find the means to share these inspiring social innovations. 

In week 7, Stephanie determined that among the main basic needs that are lacking in campamentos are limited spaces for interaction.  People in the campamentos have the ambition to create innovations with the materials and tools available to them, but do not have the resources or exposure to ideas that they can reference. Thus, to overcome the barriers of communication and to be able to share the innovations, Ramon and Will propose to do it via a monthly publication, competition, and online information hub.

The idea is to create an information hub of innovations for the people of the campamentos: a constantly updated index of innovations that are separated by tasks like water, storage, shower, kitchen, etc. The innovations would be gathered from all the campamentos in Chile and would be displayed in an analog form such as a monthly newsprint, but would also have a web presence that would constantly be updated.  The information hub of innovations would open spaces of interaction at all levels—even kids would also play an important role as the ones responsible for collecting the innovations and reporting them. The way it would work:

1. People build their own innovations
2. Innovations are collected and reported (via newsprint and web)
3. The community rates and gives feedback on innovations
4. The most popular innovations have the chance to be licensed by companies
5. People have access to affordable products

Next week, we invite you to join us in the last episode of Safe Agua Chile!  Go behind the scenes with pictures and videos you did not see.   Join us one last time and help us wrap up this exciting journey... step by step and drop by drop.  See you then!

We also invite you to watch Ramon and Will's testimonies below, and ask yourself how you can also make a change in your community.  Remember... everyone can be a changemaker!