Community Concierge Program
This solution addresses information sharing and community building in Kathmandu, Nepal for migrant and low income women, "bindis" themselves
Problem Description
The Bindi Project was born from the participation of Design For America NYU, an NYU student club, to the Women Safety challenge on OpenIDEO, an open innovation platform for social innovation, and from the collaboration started on OpenIDEO between Design Tinkering and Women for Human Rights (WHR), an NGO based in Kathmandu, Nepal. The idea was formed after many rounds of reiteration, collaboration, and feedback allowed through the OpenIDEO platform. It aims to create a service and associated toolkit which tackles the problem of information sharing and community building by creating a new role – the community concierge, whose goal is to inform and connect women within the community.Building Blocks
Story
An interesting component of this solution is its evolution. The original idea as drafted by DFA-NYU acted a seed. With the nurturing of IDEO's open source ideation platform, the Bindi Project was able to evolve in several key ways. For one, the platform allowed exposure to key partnerships, namely with a NGO in Nepal called Women for Human Rights (WHR). The platform also allowed for a public community of change practitioners to identify the idea as initially worthwhile, guiding it through stages of voting against other similar ideas. Ultimately the Bindi Project was deemed by the OpenIDEO community as worthwhile enough to receive a seed funding grant from IDEO. Both the partnerships and funding have helped launch a successful prototyping phase in Kathmandu.
Photos
Resources
- Bindis Toolkit
How to identify and develop “Bindis”, community Concierge and Caretakers, to share knowledge, empower women within and across communities.
Organisations Involved
Contributed By
- Lily Thapa, WFR
- Noah Geib, DFA NYU
Submitted By
Bryan Lehrer