Week 1

COMMENCING THE BRAIN SQUEEZE...

July 12th saw the start of the SECIP program with about 200 of us put in a chat roulette. In my opinion, it was brilliant to have the roulette not just because it gave me a chance to introduce myself to other people but because I understood the gravity of how far we all live and thrive in different demographics. The challenge ahead is to work with these people on the same problem. It is very underrated to have people from different backgrounds work on an issue they might not be familiar with or in another case, have people work on an issue that their society may have had previously and found a solution.

The idea that I understood from the first week was that it's incorrect to come to a solution to a problem without consulting the person/community who faces the problem. A government building a road from a village with a low employment rate to the city may not increase the productivity or employment of the villagers since their wants may have been demanding more prospects/opportunities in the village area itself. The concept of empathising with the one who faces the problem is the first step in design thinking, and although all steps in the process of design thinking are equally important, empathy is morally most important. It not only gives the solution authenticity to it but it fuels the appetite to perfect the solution to one's need.

Also, part of the journey to find a solution is the importance of failing to find one. The right way forward when you have x number of paths is to study x paths, test out x paths, and cut all except for that one path which is the right way forward.

You won't know what's right until you know what's wrong.

Week one also saw us understand "jugaad" or frugal innovation, and the importance of human-centric design. As said earlier, I understood the sheer power of understanding and empathy in order to materialise a solution. The talk by Mr. Deepesh Pancholi was extremely insightful into how important it is to empathise with the many examples he used.

Leading with those ideas in our minds, my team and I dived right into digging to find our target person. We somehow mutually understood and accepted that we'd all want to work on SDG 5 - Gender Equality. More specifically, after the team discussion, we understood and empathised with pregnant women and the NUMEROUS issues they face in all societies around the world. We initially took on the idea of finding issues faced by employed pregnant women and one of my teammates found an article about how pregnant factory workers in an Ice cream company suffered nearly 20 fetal deaths. [1]

We'd initially prepared a problem statement that would look at making a workplace more inclusive and accommodating pregnant women. We documented our whole brainstorming and discussed various innovations that could facilitate doing so. In our doing so, we failed to follow the very initial step, do pregnant women even want to work in the first place? After consultation we realised they'd rather not work. Hence, we looked forward and asked important questions like, what do pregnant women require the most?; what puts pregnant women at higher risks of miscarriage? Our answer was healthcare. Then again, we asked ourselves more questions, which category of expecting mothers isprone not to receiving sufficient healthcare?; Where does this category exist? Why does the problem exist?

In this manner, we were able to come to our final problem statement which was to find a solution for pregnant asylum seekers who cross the border into India from Bangladesh & Myanmar into states like West Bengal. Because this population of people does not have proper identification and documentation, they find it much harder to avail healthcare services and are left to fend for themselves. [2]

References

[1] - https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/03/05/factory-work-blamed-fetal-deaths.html

[2] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/child-died-inside-weak-nourish-lockdowns-toll-pregnant-women/