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India struggles from extreme poverty. Recent estimates reveal that India has a third of the world‘s poor. According to the World Bank, 42% of India falls below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day. At the same time, India has incredible innovation networks and opportunities for design.

During DI’s two year pilot project in India, initial project placements for the fellowship program were developed, and therefore DI’s current fellowship opportunities are in India.

However, DI hopes to expand its fellowship opportunities to multiple locations, including within the United States.

Although Design Impact is not limited to product solutions, most projects will focus on the development of a product or service. All of our projects aim to design solutions that improve access to health care, education, clean water, clean environments, social equality/human rights, or economic development. To read more about our projects, click here.

Design Impact will work to improve existing solutions or identify new ones—depending on the needs of each partner organization and the opportunity for positive social impact.

Currently we are working with solutions that were proposed by our NGO host. They were ideas that already existed, but solutions had not been designed or defined and therefore could not be implemented. In the future we hope to continue to empower the ideas of others that come from the communities they will serve.

We choose partner organizations that typically could not afford access to design, demonstrate innovative thinking in their program work, have the capacity to host Design Impact fellows, and are able to articulate how design can help address the issues that drive their mission. Organizations must be willing and able to dedicate staff time to the project they have selected. To read more about our partner organizations or to apply, click here.

Projects are managed by Design Impact and the partner organizations. Since fellows most likely cannot accomplish an entire project in their six month stay, the management and inertia for each project will remain with DI and the organization. Ensuring smooth transitions and periods of overlap, each round of designers are then able to “pick up” where the previous fellows “left off.”

An important part of our work is measuring impact. We gather both qualitative and quantitative information about the impact of our work—getting feedback from product/service users, community members, host organizations, and partners. To check the status and outcomes of each DI project, click here.