In 2021, the first community members of Humanitarian Designers (HD) collectively decided to organise a two-day in-person event during the first national France Design Week (FDW).
Titled “Design & Humanitarian aid: meeting, converging”, the event was open and free to anyone interested in exploring the connections between design and humanitarian aid.
Our overarching question throughout these two days was: How can design contribute to humanitarian work? This led us to explore topics such as What is humanitarian aid? How to integrate humanitarian aid in design schools? What is Humanitarian Designers? Who are the existing humanitarian designers and what are they doing?
To address these questions, we were proud to welcome internationally recognised speakers from organisations and design agencies working at the forefront of humanitarian design, including Butterfly Works, Common Thread, Thinkplace Kenya, Design & Human, UNIDO, IARAN, and IPA Switxboard.
The event was made possible thanks to 8 HD community members:
The event in Paris was organised with the support of 6 additional volunteers:
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During our first community calls after creating the organisation, we quickly realised that most of the first members were designers motivated to learn about humanitarian aid, but who also felt they lacked knowledge, experience or confidence to work in this sector. It was a good sign, as it showed they were approaching humanitarian aid with a do-no-harm mindset. At the same time, it also led to a lack of ownership within the organisation: nobody wanted to take decisions or start an activity.
We saw France Design Week as an opportunity to pursue three goals: