SHOWCASE: Community Engagement & Participatory Design

A public showcase in conjunction with the Forum on Community Engagement and Participatory Design in Humanitarian Innovation and Disaster Response. A public showcase of posters and project displays from participants in the Forum on Community Engagement and Participatory Design in Humanitarian Innovation and Disaster Response, as well as from students, faculty, and organizations engaged in this work. Light refreshments will be served. Background Humanitarian crises are growing in scale and frequency, while at the same time, funding and other resources for humanitarian aid are shrinking. Humanitarian innovation strives to help close that gap by designing and developing new and more effective aid products, processes, and programs. The scarcity of resources makes it increasingly important to ensure that these innovations are culturally and contextually appropriate to maximize their effectiveness and efficiency. Since the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, there has been growing emphasis on the importance of increasing participation of the affected population in humanitarian solutions. This moment makes finding practical pathways to do so even more urgent. The convergence of several different but related disciplines can catalyze new ways to bring people affected by crisis into the design of innovations in humanitarian response, disaster preparedness, and risk reduction. The Forum and Showcase bring together actors from design, humanitarian innovation, urban risk reduction, humanitarian response, community engagement, disaster response, and disaster preparedness to explore ways for increasing community participation in innovations in humanitarian and disaster response. Sponsored by MIT D-Lab, the MIT Urban Risk Lab, Boston University's Center on Forced Displacement, Red Social Innovation, the Japanese Red Cross College of Nursing Disaster Management Research Institute, the Japanese Red Cross Academy, and MIT MAD.