DS7 - Spread and Scalability

Design Studio

6 - Spreading and Scaling

SPREAD AND SCALABILITY

HOW TO MAKE YOUR INITITATIVES LAST IN TIME.

As Mara Balestrini was commenting us during presentation, one thing is to do a one-time intervention, but the other thing is to make it last in time, and there are some steps that you should try to achieve or check you are fulfilling in order

to guarantee that this intervention has spread and scalability. Some are related to “Intrinsic elements of the given initiative”, others to the “elements of the target socio-technical context” and others are “elements of the scaling and spreading process” you should be aware of.

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INTRINSIC ELEMENTS
OF THE GIVEN INITIATIVE

EASY TO USE AND UNDERSTAND:

The solution should be easy to use and understandable for the subject to use it and promote it, if it is too complex or not understandable for them, they will possibly not use it or engage with it. That´s why the education is going to have 3 stages: INSTRUCTIONAL, GUIDED, and AUTONOMOUS.

In the INSTRUCTIONAL stage they learn by following exact instructions to do something, in the GUIDED stage they can tweak or adapt what they learned to do something else, guided by the instructors, and in the AUTONOMOUS stage the learning becomes autodidactic, always with the possibility of guidance.

The “Farmi-Kits” could be a learning tool for kids STEAM education, accelerating the adoption of this kind of technology in their everyday life, by building, creating, exploring, sharing with their classmates, teachers, friends, families and community, while giving them the feeling of being part of something bigger.

All the instructions must be from a level zero, growing step by step, for everyone to be able to understand it. Here are some of the instructional techniques I think you might use.

- User Manuals.
- Video tutorials.
- Online Tutoring.
- Onboarding kits.

OPENESS:

The solution should be open enough to evolve in time, open enough so that other people can appropriate the system and improve it. That´s why I´m thinking in a distributed model, in which the learning is adapted to each place, so that anyone could add, subtract or modify content to adapt it to his community needs.

Another way to make it open for people to modify it, is the commitment that all of the students contributions are going to be Open Source, Share Alike, so that everyone can modify, contribute and/or improve our design, as long as he shares that new design with the community using the same creative commons attributions.

Also, all of the building instructions for the Farmi-Kits is going to be open for everyone to make them in case they don´t want to buy it. So they can download the files, take them to a maker or fab lab nearby and produce them locally.

PROOF OF VALUE:

The proof of value is going to be showing, in the beginning, projects they could find online built with this kind of low cost technology, that they could also learn how to do with the methodology or the kits.

So that in this way we open their mind into the scope of what they could be able to build in the future by acquiring this skills.

- Produce case videos of changes generated in the community.
- Document every action, workshop, intervention you do, to use the material for promotion.
- Interview people, ask them questions, let them comment.

ELEMENTS OF THE TARGET SOCIO-TECHNICAL CONTEXT

ALLIGNMENT OF MATHER OF CONCERN

I believe that raising the making skill level of small farmers and urban populations around the world to help them be more sustainable, ecologically and economically speaking; could help to address the food insecurity, by giving the people the tools and empowering them with knowledge to use them to try to solve some community needs.

This project aims to interconnect knowledge, skills, problems and ideas around the world, in order that anyone could use them as they need to address local problems in their community, and sharing the positive experiences to inspire others.

- Community needs.
- Community resources.
- Community opportunities.
- Community situation.

ALLIGNMENT OF LEGAL NORMS

The legal alignment with the local norms, helps you get out of trouble while trying something that you don´t know but might be illegal in the country you are executing it. In the case of my project, it would have to be checked each countries restrictions surrounding agriculture and education they have, to check if is there a way to adapt the content and be able to execute it.

There might be laws around data gathering, seeding, the plants you are allowed to grow, the use of natural resources, platform restrictions, and so on.

- Legislation related to education.
- Legislation related to use of resources.
- Legislation related to production.
- Legislation related to technology.
- Legislation related to work.
- Legislation related to modification.

ALLIGNMENT OF SOCIAL VALUES:

Not every community shares the same values, they might have different religions, believes and traditions that should be taken into account to adapt the learning process and also be shared between the network so that everyone learns from it.
The adaptability of the project is crucial to be able to react to , and look for people who wants to make a change on his community.

Evendough, you need to look for people who shares the same core values than your project, because those are some that cannot be adapted or loose.

- People looking for a change in their community for good.
- People who wants to be part of the change.
- People who leads others for good.
- People who are creative.
- People who want to learn.
- People who want to help / collaborate.
- People with Skills you need.

ELEMENTS OF THE SCALING AND SPREADING PROCESS

COMMUNITY & CHAMPIONS

For the system perdure in time, it is necessary to engage the community and to have some local champions that also help you co-lead the process. We are going to start the community engagement from schools with the Farmi-Kits, where kids are going to build and learn about the technology, for them to help us spark their families with their learnings.

With the Academy, we are going to invite all the community to participate in the building process, problem identification workshops, the scope of what we want and could do, and do some workshops with them to detect our local champions. Our Local Champions are going to be the ones we train, in order for them to teach and lead the others.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING
& TRANSFER RESOURCES

The methodology for this academy must be distributed, adaptable and scalable. Which means that we should share a global knowledge between all, and empower local knowledge to become global.

We should teach and train community champions, for them to grow the knowledge between their community.

We should interconnect every local blacksmith, carpenter, mechanic, electrical technician, bikes workshop, repair shop, craftsman, plumber, ceramist and other makers, with the community champions for them to use them as their first resource for tools.

NARRATIVES & COMMUNICATION

My first narrative tools to communicate the project are going to be an speculative website I´m creating, to show a little of the methodology I´m planning and the partners I´m looking for.

A website is a site that because of its mutability, lets me add, remove or modify content as I wish, but it´s still not a mainstream media for the people in rural areas.

So that´s why I think that in the future, when I expand the project into communities, I should also have some radio, flyers and local newspaper strategies when we are going to arrive to a new community. There should be a mix of digital and “analogue” media, with and important PR.

The other important tool to communicate it to investors, government and partners is going to be the case videos, so in the beginning I could start with a video that explains the problematic, the project, it´s current status, future plans and needs. And then create during the process the video of the evolution of the project, and as it iterates with a village, footage of those experiences or case videos of the actions.

- Website.
- Case videos.
- Radio and print media PR strategy.
- Printed material.
- Promotional material.

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