Designing for Action in West and Central Africa
What can be learned and exchanged in a short three days? A LOT, as it turns out.
Once upon a time, back in 2019, a design-focused event was held in Dakar Senegal. “Nio Far Dakar” brought together social change practitioners and partners interested in innovation, health and Human Centered Design (HCD).
Fast forward to 2024, with some inspiration in our sails from the Nio Far event, we organized a three-day gathering for more than 15 countries, to exchange ideas and resources on Designing for Action.
We chose the term “action” for our event so signal that we’re going beyond individual behaviour with our social change efforts. The general term “Designing” was used to capture experiences using various approaches for social change: Human Centered Design (or “Life Centered Design,” as some are now calling it), Behavioural Insights and Behavioural Design.
Below we capture some highlights from our exchange workshop, June 11–13, 2024 in Dakar Senegal. Participants were primarily colleagues from UNICEF offices in the West and Central Africa Region, with some invited guests design and innovation firms (mostly based in Dakar) and some colleagues from other UNICEF regions (Merci and Gracias to our colleagues from Madagascar, Ethiopia, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Panama).
When perusing the below, keep you eyes open for ***resources*** as we recap the three days.
- Day 1: We kicked off with a lightning round of “Pecha Kucha” presentations on design and innovation for social change in four countries (visuals only, no text, 6 minutes 40 seconds max). Kudos to the pioneering colleagues who volunteered to present, from country offices in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso. (Lesson learned: We should have recorded these, but didn’t manage it at the time). We followed with a ***scavenger hunt*** across several neighborhoods in the city. This activity was designed as an inspiration walk, to help us discover the city, strengthen relationships, and get us out of the conference room: Mission accomplished.
- Day 2: Our second day was dedicated to exchanging insights and lessons learned among participants, using ***one-page overviews*** of what various social change approaches being used by country offices. These exchanges formed the basis of action plans for systems strengthening, to answer this key question: “How might we anchor new social change approaches within government and civil society systems, services and institutions?”
- Participant used their workshop ***passports*** to capture ideas for building their action plans and names and contact info for colleagues whose work inspired them. Prior to the workshop, we shared a workshop ***travel guide*** made up of one-page overviews of how country offices were using various social change approaches for child rights in their countries.
- Our talented technical partners from Common Thread contributed several creative assets, including the Passports, several key features of the workshop design, and their own skills and experience with design, facilitation, photography, documentation and strategy.
- Day 3: For our final day together we did more exploring. This time we were not out on the streets of Dakar, but instead in a series of rotating group discussions with technical partners focused on design, innovation and human rights. We were thrilled to hear insights and experiences from colleagues working at Ideas42/Dakar, YUX Design/Dakar, Common Thread/Global, Public Digital, and the International Office of Migration/West and Central Africa.
One major insights we took away from those discussions was about avoiding getting caught up in names (Human Centered Design, Service Design, Life-Centered Design, etc.) and instead focusing on key principles of inclusion, co-creation, light and fast prototyping and bringing the best of private sector tactics into humanitarian and human rights-oriented work.
A final workshop activity for participants on day 3 was the creation of short action plans for systems strengthening on social and behaviour change at country level followed by rounds of discussion, feedback and rapid adaptation. The focus on systems helps us go beyond our own offices and organizations to think creatively about bringing new social change approaches into government ministries and civil society networks.
We want to thank the participants who traveled from across West and Central Africa, and beyond, thanks to colleagues who joined us from Bolivia, Panama, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and Madagascar. For the more than 50 colleagues and technical partners who contributed to the three day exchange of ideas, a few short and optimistic words from us: We’re looking forward to seeing how the garden of ideas and actions continues to grow! (And please feel free to invite us to come visit, to admire the progress) :)
We welcome your ideas, and any general feedback you might have for us. Click here to share comments, suggestions, or ideas for collaboration (if pitching collaboration, please leave a contact name and email address). Best regards, UNICEF West and Central Africa Social and Behavior Change Team, Dakar Senegal.
