Our non-profit organisation, Humanitarian Designers, conducted a three-day workshop from September 23rd to 25th, 2024. A total of 46 people, coming from 16 countries and having diverse professional backgrounds and experiences, gathered at CERN IdeaSquare to “Explore & Reconnect humanitarian design practices”. This report provides an extensive overview of the various activities we organised and the insights that emerged from each of them.
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We are a non-profit organisation founded in France in 2021. Our mission is to build bridges between the humanitarian and design sectors through awareness raising, teaching, and collaborative activities. Currently, we have an online community of more than 800 members from over 90 countries, and we are committed to expanding our knowledge and practices collaboratively with our community.
IdeaSquare, the innovation space at CERN, provides collaborative methods and scientific expertise to harvest innovation knowledge. They coordinate and offer a space for projects, events, and workshops while collaborating with students, scientists, and organisations to develop early stage innovations that will have an impact on people’s life and the future of our society.
La Caisse des Dépôts is a French governmental financial institution that supports public-interest projects and sustainable development. Established in 1816, it manages long-term investments and provides funding for initiatives in areas such as infrastructure, housing, and innovation. As a key partner, it has generously contributed to the funding of our event.
This event aimed to create a space for reflecting on our practices and exploring better ways to collaborate between the aid and the design sectors. Throughout the three days, participants worked in groups to generate ideas and collectively discuss their findings at each stage.
A graphic recorder drew a summary of the discussions that happened during the event.
On the first day, we began with analysing our humanitarian practices and their associated challenges with questions like “What could go wrong?” and “Where do these issues come from?”.
Next, we observed that these challenges often stem from systemic or contextual issues, making them difficult to prevent or address. We explored this by asking, “Could safeguarding practices prevent these issues?” and “What practices do we use to make it go right?”.
Finally, we collectively mapped our lived experiences and what we do to ‘make things rights’. We then asked “How would you apply these practices?” and “How does this make you feel?” ****to learn and reflect on how we could apply these practices in our daily work.