When a blighted city needs transformation, it’s usually a bulldozer rather than a brush that does the work.
Few years ago, Edi Rama, Tirana’s mayor at the time, started in a creative way to paint the sad facades of the buildings built during communism.  But what did the two Dutch artists, Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, went gone further.

The project is certainly not recent, but it’s always worth to mention the fantastic idea of a slum redevelopment in an artistic and creative way.
With Favela Painting they have given a new look to the favela of Santa Marta: 34 buildings and 7.000 square feet of space have been transformed into a work of art. And to do that what did they thought about? They called the local people to paint their neighborhood, what they could do after completing a training course. The rate of participation was very high. After finishing the job in Santa Marta, and thanks to the professional title of painter acquired, many have been able to find a job.

The two artists end up together in Rio since 2005 to film a documentary on hip-hop movement in the city for MTV. Conquered the place, they decided to stop, and began to paint their first huge murals in the slums of the city, involving young people residing in this activity.
In an interview with CNN Urhahn and Kolhaas explained: “We wanted to help make a positive way both people and the environment, bringing character to a place and giving a little degraded to the people of dignity”.
The goals of the project are manifold: to provide local people opportunities to become skilled workers; to give the community a source of pride; to call in a positive and artistic way the media and the authorities attention on the precarious situation of the favelas.

Colour in architecture can operate on a transformation that changes the qualities of the environment and buildings. If colour can transform architecture, it can transform our space, simply through paint and light. The opportunities for renewal are ecological, and most importantly available to all.

Images: Courtesy of  Firmeza Foundation

A 1.5 litre plastic bottle filled with purified water and three spoons of bleach and then fitted to a hole in the roof. The sun rays are curbed by the bottle.

“Designed and developed by students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Solar Bottle Bulb is based on the principles of Appropriate Technologies – a concept that provides simple and easily replicable technologies that address basic needs in developing countries.

“The bottles function as 60-watt lights powered by 100% solar energy. Refraction is an amazing thing, if you drilled a hole in your ceiling light would drop directly through the opening in a straight line casting a shadow on the ground in the shape of the hole. By placing a bottle filled with water into the hole, the light is refracted by the water and emitted at 360 degrees like a light bulb.”

Solar Bottle Light Bulb can only be used during the day. The bottle bulb can produce as much light similar to a 50W to 60W incandescent light bulb.

Here are the things you need to create a Solar Bottle Bulb:

1. Roof sheet material preferably 1×1.

2. Purified Water

3. Chlorine

4. Rubber Sealant

5. 1.5 Litre clears Soda Bottle

The creation process:

1. Fill the clear soda bottle with purified water and adds 3 tablespoons of liquid bleach or chlorine. And tightly seal the cap. Note that purified water is needed because moss will not grow in it, unlike tap water.

2. Cut a hole in the roof sheet as big as the diameter of the bottle. Make sure that the other half of the bottle, starting from the cap, is exposed so that it could capture sunlight.

3. Make a hole in your roof, the same size as the bottle (not the roof sheet).

4. Insert the bottle with the roof sheet in the hole of your roof and seal it with a rubber sealant to prevent leaking due to rain.

It will produce light when the bottle is exposed to the sunlight. It is expected to last for 2 years before you need to replace it.

Today it is not so easy to find an innovative good way to organize a fundraising campaign,  50/50 Make or Break project has done it.
The starting point is a question about how to support more than one idea, and the answer is a collaborative fundraising experiment, a collection of extraordinary digital projects from all over the world.

The brainchild of social innovation lab Good for Nothing, in collaboration with Made by Many conceived the platform 50/50 to launch 50 projects in 50 days, projects that support a cause. They asked to dozens of creative individuals or teams of makers to help them raise some money by making little bets. The reason for all of this is that there is a huge need: the UN has declared a famine in East Africa and it’s massive:

• A child is dying every six minutes
• 12 million people are seriously at risk
• It’s the worst famine anywhere in the world for 60 years
• The scale of this is utterly frightening: five times more people are at risk than those who died in all the recent tsunamis and earthquakes put together (Indonesia, Haiti, Pakistan, Japan) – but less than 20% of the money needed
• No-one is talking about it – partly because there are few images and partly because we’re preoccupied with our own economic stuff.

“There’s nothing in the world worse than watching your own child die in front of your eyes because you cannot feed him” – Ban Ki Moon

50/50 hope these projects will be weighted towards ‘making’ – making playful, shareable things that engage people in a more active and – dare I say it “participatory” way than simply asking for donations.

Help put more meals on the table by snagging a trendy UNICEF and BBH-designed Threadless tee, sponsoring one planner’s quest to eat like a refugee for a month, or even downloading your favorite songs from iTunes through the buyTunes project… There are some amazing projects. Projects of every size and type, and there are still projects coming… The best part is that all funds go directly to UNICEF and the promise of a better future.

This is what you can do:

• find a project , support and promote it among your friends
• if you love what they do simply donate.

Images: Courtesy of 50/50.gd Project

“We are what we do” is the slogan of Utilità Manifesta, an association of social promotion based in Terni – Umbria, composed of a group of graphic designers who are actively engaged since 2004 in raising awareness on social issues, and in promoting human rights through graphic and design projects.

Their modus operandi is to design communications through a strong ethical awareness and a great sense of political, cultural and social responsibility.

Their way is innovative and their research is multidisciplinary. Comparison and exchange are the basis of carrying out projects focusing on important topics of daily life: responsability, autonomy, children’s rights, immigration, the planet etc. The purpose is solidarity and cooperation. They collaborate with networks and institutions and try to reach the greatest number of people. They rely on social design to make visible and raise awareness of injustice, inequality and indifference.

The association is sponsored by AIAP, the Italian Association for Visual Communication, Municipality of Terni, Terni Province, together with other realities that support their activities: Emergency, Ministry of Justice, Legambiente, UNICEF, etc.

The result of their activities is evident, in 2007 the association was awarded the Sappi Prize for “Multiculture – A piece for the new society,” a campaign that focused on the socio-cultural integration of immigrants. The following project was developed after the earthquake in Abruzzo Italy, they created a special interior and exterior signage for the city tent of Poggio Roio – L’Aquila.

In 2010, the association, which until then had developed graphic projects, decided it can do more and added product design projects. “Fight Poverty” launched its first international competition on the theme “less waste more rights”, supported by Fedrigoni, Graphic Masters and ADI, Industrial Design Association delegation from Umbria. The result is ten finalists ex aequo for each of the two categories, Graphic Design and Industrial Design (the images are shown in the gallery). In addition, there are twenty other worthy projects, and at this point, we refer to the association’s website, where you can find all the projects.

There you will realize how a good design is a winning weapon to raise and improve awareness: the social design has no boundaries and can give a lot in difficult situations.

One last thing, the call was published for the contest of 2011 dedicated to volunteering, the deadline for submissions is on October 30th.

Images: Courtesy of Utilità Manifesta Association

I think it is never enough when we speak about behaviour change in manufacturing products. Resuming from my last post about Steelcase I would like to introduce one of their most interesting projects: The Think chair.

In 2000 Steelcase was the first office furniture company to apply the Life Cycle thinking in the design of new products. Understanding how a product is made, they can identify opportunities to make it use less energy and reduce its waste and environmental impact.

Since 2000 their internal eco-design policy have been leading them to:

(1) Ensure designed products contain the highest possible recycled content; (2) Reduce the number of components for quick and easy disassembly and effective recycling; (3) Ensure the absence of heavy metals or harmful substances (no PVC, Chrome 6 replaced by Chrome 3); (4) Shrink packaging volumes to save fuel and reduce CO2 emissions; and (5) Ensure the recyclability of products (materials choice and design for disassembly).

With the Think chair, Steelcase has proved all their design principles, as they say, “Intelligent product design requires incorporating environmental thinking from the beginning of a process. We know that the only way to provide the best products in the world is to ensure that they’re the best products for the world. That’s why every step of the way – through design, manufacture, delivery and product lifecycle - we consider the impact of our work on the environment and uncover opportunities to make things better.”

The Think chair is a chair thoughtful enough to measure, and minimizes, its lifelong impact on the environment.

The Think chair is the first product to ever receive Cradle to Cradle™ Product Certification from McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) and has Gold-level certification. The Cradle to Cradle™ Product Certification evaluates a product for human and environmental health impacts throughout its lifecycle and its potential for being truly recycled or safely composted. Certification of a finished product also requires the evaluation of energy-use quantity and quality (i.e., relative proportion of renewable energy), water-use quantity, water-effluent quality, and workplace ethics associated with manufacturing.

At the same time, the Institute for Product Development in Denmark conducted a complete Life Cycle Assessment, evaluating the Think chair’s lifelong impact on the environment – from materials extraction through production, shipping, use, and end of life. The results of the Life Cycle Assessment are reported in the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), created per ISO 14025. The EPD shows the Think chair’s impact on environmental factors like global warming, smog, resource depletion, and waste.

The Think chair is the first product ever to be level™ 3 certified to the BIFMA e3 sustainability standard. According to BIFMA, the level™ conformance mark ensures a comprehensive, independent and impartial assessment of the environmental and social impacts of a product’s manufacture. Level certification makes it easy to identify products that have been evaluated against a consensus-based, multi-attribute sustainability standard.

A few more environmental facts about Think:

Up to 98% recyclable by weight; Disassembly for recycling takes about five minutes using common hand tools (hammer, screwdriver, etc.); Up to 37% recycled content.

If you are still not convinced or want to investigate more about the environmental considerations of the Think chair, more information are available in the Think Environmental Brochure.

Steelcase Inc. is a nearly 100 years old  brand that offers a comprehensive portfolio of workplace furnishings, products and services. Designing to achieve social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Steelcase was created by a few people with a strong commitment to integrity and doing the right thing for their customers, employees, business partners, associates and neighbours. And as 99 years ago Steelcase presents the following as core values: Act with integrity, Tell the truth, Keep commitments, Treat people with dignity and respect, Promote positive relationships, and Protect the environment.

Steelcase began in 1912 as The Metal Office Furniture Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The company Received its first patent in 1914 for a steel wastebasket — a major innovation at a time when straw wastebaskets were a serious office fire hazard. That led to metal desks, and they’ve proposed product and service innovations ever since.

Last July Steelcase recived a Bronze award from the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), an annual competition that recognizes product designs which enhance quality of life and the economy. This is just the last of a long series of awards/recognitions for moving the design research forward in innovation, sustainable development and conservation.

In Steelcase words: ”sustainability is one of today’s fundamental business challenges – and our inspiration. Everyday our team works to create maximum value from our available assets and be catalysts for good. We know we are on a journey. Along the way, it is our responsibility to care for our planet and its people.  As we continue to study, learn and share insights, our commitments and accountabilities continue to grow in measurable and meaningful ways. All of this leads us to deliver innovative products and increased value to our customers and stakeholders.”

What if a book didn’t just talk about saving the world – but actually did it?
End Malaria: purchasing this benevolent tome literally enables you to rescue people from a tragic fate.

The book features essays, tips and insights on great work by 62 writers, visionaries and thinkers including Michael Bungay Stanier, Sir Ken Robinson, Jessica Hagy, Scott Belsky, Gary Vaynerchuk, David Allen, and more.
It is divided into three sections: Focus, Courage and Resilience, in which luminaries inspire you to seek answers to everyday dilemmas from within, motivating you to bring your desires to fruition, the compilation will change your life as well.

This book smart campaign was planned to give unprecedented ‘net’ profits, with $20 out of every $25 book sale (100% of the Kindle price and 80% of the hardcover price) going to Malaria No More to buy mosquito nets for a family in need to support their fight against malaria. The Malaria No More mission it is to end malaria deaths in Africa by the year 2015.

Such a large donation is possible because of the innovative business model of the publisher.  The Domino Project,  is the publisher of this book (powered by Amazon and created by Seth Godin). What makes them unique is the way they “do books”. Therefore, End Malaria is only available online, it makes things all the more easy–just one click away!

Ps: In the time it took you to read this post, a child was killed by malaria.

Buy here

Voluntourism (Volunteering + Tourism) is one of the sustainable ways to approach tourism, and PEPY Tours is a model for responsible voluntourism.

Pepy is both an international non-governmental organization registered in the USA and Cambodia, PEPY, and an educational adventure and service-learning tour operator, PEPY Tours that helps to fund education programs while inspiring change in the way people travel.

Daniela Rubi Papi, the cofounder of the organization says

“We arrived in Cambodia in 2005 with a lot of enthusiasm, but also a lot of naïve and incorrect ideas. We thought we could help people by giving them things that they needed and improve education by building schools. We came to a new place we knew very little about with our own ideas about education and change. We have since realized that schools don’t teach kids, people do; things don’t change lives, people knowing how to use them or make them does; and that we had not arrived to teach, but instead to learn and support the development of those who have the capacity to teach, even long after we leave.”

TEDx BKK Daniela Rubi Papi

The first sustainable real aspect of this organization is the transparent pricing system applied.  Pepys Tourists pay for the tour and also commit to a found raising goal, the former paying the tour operator and sending money into the local economy. The volunteering part is left open to meet the needs of the local community, in this way Pepy is helping the local economy and not on the need of the tourism. In this way tourist will get a full picture of the country’s socioeconomic challenges and not contribute just to small tangible results.

The Pepy Journal is very interesting to understand how this enlightened organization is run and which are the challenges every voluntourism organization face.

August, vacation time for antonomasia, inspired me for a series of considerations about Travel and Tourism.

I love to travel, most of the people do! This makes us consumers of one of the world’s biggest industries: Tourism. For many countries, tourism is in the top three sources of foreign exchange. Italy is the fifth most visited country in the world with more than 43,2 million tourist arrivals (in 2009). And the Tourism sector produces 12% of the total Italian PIL (2009).  As tourist, we may stop over a certain place only once in our life besides our experiences and memories remain with us forever. The effects of our trips may endure just as long, that’s why it’s necessary to travel conscientiously.

When we go on holiday, we spend a lot of money on transport, accommodation, food, fun in general and souvenirs. And although we’d like to think that the majority of our hard earned money is going to support our destination’s local economy, the reality is that most of it never reaches the community we are visiting. Some of our moneys go to airlines headquartered in Europe or United States, and the rest to a hotel owned by a multinational chain. This effect is intensified if we purchase an all-inclusive resort package.

Applying “buy local” practice to dining lodging and touring choices, as well as to souvenir selection, is a good first step. But the possibilities to create green travel are myriad, but even altruistic solutions like carbon-neutral ecoresorts and voluntourism are full of contradictions. Actually, despite all the fuss about going green, the travel industry is seriously straggling behind other behemoth industries to create lasting change. This is partly because the travel industry is a mixture of smaller industries (hotels, cars hire, airlines, publishing, governmental agencies). But partly it’s also because few environmentalists are willing to include a scenario in which we figure out how to help more people travel. This closed mentality is in conflict with the other messages we receive daily – about cooperation, curiosity and understanding of places we’ve never seen. If reaching and maintaining large-scale sustainability requires all of us to think globally, then we must figure out how to protect the mechanisms that get us out into the world.

INDEGO AFRICA is an innovative non-profit social enterprise, the name stands for “independence, development, and governance”—three life-changing attributes that Indego Africa is helping instill in 250 Rwandan women in order to lift them and their families out of poverty.

The business model is simple yet ground-breaking: partnership with cooperatives of women artisans in Rwanda, pay the women a fair wage, and 100% of the profits are returned to the artisans for training in long-term skills. The organization’s approach has become the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. HBS Professor Kathleen McGinn said: “This is completely backward from what everyone else does. They created all the processes before they started, designed all the procedures, translated them into the language the women needed, and created the links to the American market”.

Since 2007 Indego Africa has improved the lives of more than 250 women and their 600 dependents (approximately). Their social impact includes increase in the number of women earning more than US$ 1 a day and increase in the number of families eating at least twice in a day. The goal is for the women to achieve independence in three areas: personal finance, independence from Indego Africa, and access to the export markets.

In late September 2010 the collaboration with fashion designer Nicole Miller started, she partnered with the nonprofit Indego Africa to launch a line of fair-trade textile bangles and woven bracelets.

Nicole Miller and her team purchased the bracelets up front from the two Rwandan villages of Cocoki and Covanya to benefit the women. In addition, they are donating 15 percent of the proceeds to Indego Africa.The bracelets can be purchased at the Nicole Miller boutique located at 1419 N. Wells St. or online.

Images Courtesy Indego Africa