Erica Kim's Social Entrepreneurship Studio Blog

English for Action Structure Board

2008-10-30T04:52:00.000-07:00

English For Action

2008-10-30T02:55:00.000-07:00

Group discussion with Tony about the culture and Providence’s ethnicity, population, education, and social structure has helped me to understand the diversity of this city. English for Action is currently located at one of the elementary school in Olneyville. It was purposely placed in Onleyville to serve the concentrated population of Latino immigrant families. It is English for Action’s goal to provide a language center which program methods are using visual arts, theater of the oppressed, and action projects to engage adults and younger learners in dialogue, reflection and collaboration. I have been helping out in childcare program, Ourschool. While adults learn English, their kids, about thirty children, are gathered in a classroom, overseen by a few supervisors to help them with their homework or have some interactive actives with student’s age from five to twelve. It has been interesting to see kid’s interacting among themselves; some older kid will look after a younger one as if the younger child is his or her sibling. Additionally, it is both positive and negative to have such a diverse age group. It is interesting to see variety of preferences, skills, and understanding of each age group; however, at the same time, it is hard to coordinate the activities that all age will enjoy. Overall, EFA community is very optimistic, full of positive energies which creates inspiring atmosphere to learn for learners, fun place for teachers to teach and good-intentioned volunteers to help out. It is surprising to see them sustaining their key value of creating a community and creating leaders who can help the one’s who are in need. EFA have been going through some huge adjustments but the reason why it still manages to exist is because of these strong positive beliefs and their goal of good cause.

where my thoughts been

2008-10-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

A Better World by Design
what is design?
what is elegance?
what is economical?
what is life-saving?

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Are the MDGs the Best Place to Start?

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Product design initiatives for Humanity, Habitats, Health, and Happiness.

Project H Design is a charitable organization that supports, inspires, and delivers life-improving humanitarian product design solutions. We champion industrial design as a tool to address social issues, a vehicle for global life improvement, and a catalyst for individual and community empowerment.

Project H Design encourages the reorientation of the design industry towards a more socially-impactful and humanitarian entity through a variety of Initiatives that include design thinking, production and distribution, funding, design academics, and local chapter projects.

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Grain mission

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Doing Good is Good for People, the Planet and for Business

"If you read my work, you likely know that I believe every person and every business and institution should make an effort to put people ahead of all else and contribute to making the planet a better place to live and work."

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Seventh Generation is a business that operates according to a new and different set of principles… We work to create a corporate culture in which people are energized and fulfilled as members of an intentional community.

"Today, we live in a world of increasingly widespread social disruption caused by imbalances in the natural and societal systems human beings depend upon for survival. Our civilization is overly reliant on non-renewable sources of energy. Our economic system spends more on weapons than schools. Our oceans are being scoured clean of life. Chemicals in our food, air, water, and soils air are disrupting our health. The list seems nearly endless and it leads to perhaps the most pernicious dilemma of all: problem fatigue and the widespread cynicism and powerlessness it generates.

"In response to these and other challenges, new ways of looking at purpose-based business-ing is slowly and yet, progressively happening. Seventh Generation is a business that operates according to a new and different set of principles, values that in many ways are marked departure from those long considered “traditional.” We offer employees avenues not to express their greed and ambition but their idealism, passion, and commitment to causes larger than themselves. We promote this approach to doing business not only among our employees, but to each of our stakeholders from manufacturing partners to our consumers."

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AVO

Problem and Mission Statments for the Project

2008-10-13T23:18:00.000-07:00

Problem Statement

Solomon Islands are deprived in Free Primary Education. They are in a process of applying for the grant, and their goal is to start the Free Primary Education in 2009. To sustain the education, they need to provide a good education to create leaders. Leaders, who will graduate from school and help the family, community, and the nation.

Mission Statement

To create leaders from education, a creative learning has to be applied. Education should provide not only information but help children develop their thinking and understanding.

Born into Brothels

2008-10-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

I've thought Kids with Cameras were not relevant to my project of creating a curriculum in Solomon Islands; however, as I was researching what a good education was, I could not help but to keep relating the key points to Born Into Brothels.
Their simple activity of carrying the camera and taking picture was the active learning.
Kids not only learned how to use camera by physically doing it, they were actively engaged. free to explore and document their interest and surroundings.
Next step why it was a great learning experiment was because it had potential implication, it gave them purpose of why they were taking the picture: to share it with others, to show in the gallery.
At last, it was done in a group form. They had peers to share their learning and experience....

I underestimated the happy accident, education process. Because it all started with the director's simple desire to document and understand the Brothels, without a real plan of education, I didn't see it at the beginning. There is not greater success than BEING there, understanding the need in hand, and solving the situation on the spot.

Random Information Research

2008-10-13T16:09:00.000-07:00

Basic Teaching Strategies (from GMU)
"The advantages of the lecture approach are that it provides a way to communicate a large amount of information to many listeners, maximizes instructor control and is non-threatening to students. The disadvantages are that lecturing minimizes feedback from students, assumes an unrealistic level of student understanding and comprehension, and often disengages students from the learning process causing information to be quickly forgotten."

the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
On the Cutting Edge - Professional Development for Geoscience Faculty
Designing Effective and Innovative Courses

Research shows clearly that a person must be engaged to learn. People learn by actively participating in observing, speaking, writing, listening, thinking, drawing, and doing.
Learning is enhanced when a person sees potential implications, applications, and benefits to others.
Learning builds on current understanding (including misconceptions!).

As you enter a classroom ask yourself this question: "If there were no students in the room, could I do what I am planning to do?" If your answer to the question is yes, don't do it.

Gen. Ruben Cubero, Dean of The Faculty, United States Air Force Academy

"What would it be like to teach in a general education classroom using the strategies and techniques I was using with gifted children?", Carol Horn asked herself. "In my new heterogeneous classroom of sixth graders, I first presented a more challenging curriculum for all students, and then adjusted and differentiated as needed in order to accommodate a variety of readiness levels. . .I found that all students thrived on and were motivated by a challenging and complex curriculum." (Classroom Leadership On-Line, September 2000)

Education Value of Chess

"Research shows, there is a strong correlation between learning to play chess and academic achievement. In 2000, a landmark study found that students who received chess instruction scored significantly higher on all measures of academic achievement, including math, spatial analysis, and non-verbal reasoning ability (Smith and Cage, 2000).

While studies have shown chess to have a positive impact on kids in elementary, middle and high school, AF4C targeted second and third graders as the evidence, and certainly our experience, suggests it's the ideal age. Eight and nine year-old minds and thinking skills are developing rapidly, and chess teaches higher level thinking skills such as the ability to visualize, analyze, and think critically.

If you teach an adult to play chess, they quickly comprehend where they should and shouldn't move pieces to capture or avoid capture. Young Kate knew the names of the pieces and how they moved, but initially moved her pieces randomly. Soon she was saying, "If I move my piece here, you could capture it, right? Then I'm not going to move there." You can almost see the mental changes taking place. "

Thinking Skills

"It was once thought that the teaching of thinking skills was not a possibility, since they were believed to be innate. As these tools were developed they were then believed to be appropriate mostly for more intelligent or more advanced learners. Now we understand that the skills of problem-solving, analysis, synthesis, creativity, evaluation, and other higher order thinking processes can be taught and learned, even by those considered to be less able than their peers. Most of these tools can be embedded into the teaching of any subject, and many can be facilitated through specific software programs. As students use computers as tools to learn, they also exercise their thinking by learning how to ask the right questions, pursue research on the Internet, and evaluate their sources of information."

2008-10-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

Confucius

I hear and I forgot
I see and I remember
I do and I understand

Basic Education Colition

2008-10-09T01:14:00.000-07:00

Turning Kenyan Child Brides into Scholars
An award-winning program in Kenya substitutes the traditional practice of "booking" girls for marriage with a new idea of "booking" them to attend school instead. The Maasai people are a pastoral tribe, who subscribe to the practice of Esaiyata, or "booking" their daughters for marriage-often before they are born. The Christian Children's Fund is supporting a program that uses the familiar process of offering a dowry to a girl's father (in the form of donated livestock and gifts) in order to secure the girl's release to school. In essence, the school becomes the child's "husband" and she is sent to live and study with other girls in the boarding school.

Engine Service Design & their process of designing

2008-10-09T00:10:00.001-07:00

Our process

Each client project has a slightly different service focus, for example, improving the quality of the customer experience by working with front line staff, re-designing the customer journey, developing a service vision or innovating new customer propositions.

Projects unfold in three general phases. Identify, Build and Measure. The phases break down a little further - we’ve outlined this below in the diagram and stage breakdown.

Engine design process

Orientate and Discover

After Planning, the first phases for us are Orientate and Discover. Orientation is about getting to know the organisation we’re working with, understanding their business model and the nature of the market in which they operate. We get to ask all sorts of naive questions of very senior managers. We set up and run workshops using a variety of techniques to orientate ourselves and to allow a project team to begin to share their views about the context that has been identified.

During Discover we use a number of techniques to understand how things are working from the perspective of those who use the organisation’s services - and those that provide them.

These first two steps make up the Identify phase and provide us with an understanding of what success might look like as well as list of key issues and challenges we’ll be looking to address.

Generate

Next there’s the start of the Build phase with a systematic Generation step in which we conceptualise and explore visually many responses to the challenge. This happens at Engine, with our clients and often with their customers through the design of workshops that allow people to design their own services (a great route to customer insight as well as to out-of-the-blue service innovation).

Synthesise and Model

Prototyping is critical in reducing risk and getting the best results and this applies equally whether designing strategy, propositions or the touchpoints of a customer experience. So the next phase in Build is to model and test our ideas. As we’re designers and not management consultants this is a very visual and creative phase in which we can bring new propositions or strategic futures to life in ways that allow them to be refined collaboratively with our client team or with customers.

Ideas or propositions are refined and evaluated iteratively which happens in different ways depending on the client and the sector. For example, we worked directly with analysts at Norwich Union to ensure that the ideas we generated for insurance services were more than just blue sky but meet the commercial requirements of the insurer. A point is reached at which we agree that we’ve got what we need. This is sometimes as far as our client needs to go before pitching a new proposition into their organisation.

Specify

We work with many clients to specify services in detail. As a multidisciplinary team we’re as comfortable specifying physical service environments - as we’ve done with Virgin Atlantic at Heathrow - as we are specifying financial or on-line services. Services are specified through a number of representations beyond written market concept documents. Our expertise is in describing the near-future experiences of a service and in detailing their content and functionality through scenarios maps, mock-ups, story-boards and so on.

Measure (with empathy)

Being able to measure efficiency and effectiveness - but also desirability, usefulness and usability of services is critical to getting the feedback needed to support on-going improvement. This step connects the start of the process with the end. In other words, to establish what customers and providers value, to design services that create this value and to be able to measure the ability to create it and inform further improvement.

Produce

Working with our clients as they move towards service production means the designing and development of the touchpoints of that service. We design websites, service interiors, products and communications. We also support the training of front-line workers with the design of workshops and tools to help staff evaluate the experiences that they are delivering to customers.

Transfer and transformation

One big advantage of our approach cited in client testimonials over and over again is that often as a result of our work with them they are able to adopt new ways of working. Design-led methodologies are very accessible and therefore respond to an organisation’s objective to work more creatively and collaboratively. We’re strong on both creativity and process.

Design project Theme board

2008-10-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

When I thought about "theme board", what kind of feeling do I want in this project?, out of the blue, i imagined a handful of soil with a plant in the hand.
I had to question why I was thinking of this image, and why it will be appropriate. without the answer, I asked myself what else? I imagined a open ocean, or an image of an open field.
Once I found two photos that i wanted, it clicked in my head. I want a feeling of a strong foundation, and some feeling of freedom, grand, open, inspiring.

inspiration

2008-10-06T19:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aif6X7PcBTo

familiar?

I initially started looking at a photos of Solomon Island tribe's tattoo and its patterns. but i find their dance and music to be more unique and inspiring.

2008-10-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

A life of a Solomon Island teacher

2008-10-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

July 10, 2007
two months after the earth quake, in west of Solomon Island, 35,000 people were displaced, half of them being kids.

UNICEF created two type of supply kits:
60 School-in-a-boxs (each box providing supplies for 80 students)
it includes: pen, pencil, chalk, exercise books, markers, flip charts, blackboards, paints, brushes, posters, alphabet & number & world maps, etc
100 recreation kits
it includes: handball, volley balls, basket ball, soccer ball, etc

Ray Avery

2008-10-06T19:17:00.000-07:00

Patrick Awuah

2008-10-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

“The question of transformation in Africa is a question of leader.” - Patrick Awuah

He came to United States to attend liberal art college. After graduating, he was hired by Microsoft to Design and implement new software. He was getting great pay, and he had a good life until he had his own children. He said he started thinking how his kids are going to view Africa, their father’s homeland. It was then when he moved back home and talked to people. Ask them and listened what their concern were. He said a lot of people talked about corruption in the government and weak institutions. Then he started questioning who these people are in government and where they are coming from. It was citizen’s peers and friends who had just higher education than the other. He saw a problem of how they haven’t been educated right. “Every society must be intention about educating its leaders” said Patrick Awuah. He wanted to help students become ethical entrepreneur; educating young minds so they can grow up and become great leaders of society.

A student from his class wrote an e-mail to him saying “I am thinking now.” being taught to think rather than just a technical skill to get a job might have been the eye opening moment for the students. He involves his students in education by providing real world problems. As a student, knowing that their voice and their opinion matters, and the fact that they have capability to impact the society was a big deal. On their own, students started questioning “can we create a perfect society?” He’s been teaching for past couple years and he has been getting great feedbacks from where ever his students are working, reporting how they are all brilliant, have passion, persistent. He emphasized the manner how we educate leader is fundamental: leaders should be courageous, think critically and analytically, ability to confront complex problem, and deal with ambiguity.

Solomon Island UNMDG

2008-10-06T18:51:00.000-07:00

Making of Sony Bravia Ad

2008-09-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

so beautiful, so natural, inspirational,
pure.

"Mr. W"

2008-09-17T17:24:00.001-07:00

This advertisement by EPURON GmbH, a subsidiary of Conergy AG, was made in Germany in 2007. It won the top honor for best film advertising spot at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes couple years ago. I like unique advertising which intrigues me with its originality. Its poetic child like playful personification of wind's characteristic awes the audience and make them think twice about wind. I like how they were able to sum up with its emphasis on its usefulness.

Reason for taking this course

2008-09-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

I will start from the very beginning.
When I was in high school, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just though I would do my best and go to a college that will accept me. Just before my sophomore year was about to end, my mom suggest me "why don't you go to an art college?" My mom's friend's daughter had gotten into Art Center in Pasadena for an ID major. She got the insight that ID has a good job filed and suggest me that I should do it.My habit of getting bored easily and quickly has been always with me. However, with art, I've always enjoyed creating art, and it was surprising to know how consistent I was.
I created portfolio pieces and applied to seven different art schools that had ID majors. Out of all the places I've applied, RISD seems to be pretty well known, so I came. I've enjoyed all of my foundation studios, and it was my first semester in RISD when I got to take 3D course for the first time. At that time I liked all drawing, 2D, and 3D equally, but knowing that ID is broad field, I chose ID as my major thinking that I'll figure it out later.
While I was taking ID studios for 2 years, I wasn't happy. I had to explore something else other than ID. I took Babson Studio, and learned that there are people who have different mind set and realized for the first time that i had to communicate differently than how I would usualy do in RISD. I wanted to learn more how business worked, so I took Business for Entrepreneurship course but found out that I wans't too interested in dealing with money even though I knew its essencial in today's society.
I like to help and I am curious being, so I perticipated in ID student rep. department meeting and Student Alliance meeting. Also, contributed in IDSA RISD chapter, for it to become a helpful organization for ID students. I am still serving in both ID student rep and IDSA RISD terasure, I like that I can contribute and the fact that I am surrounded by peers who have same goal to improve the lacking field.
From all of the experience I've gained, I've realized education, organization, business, politic, design, and sustainability, all have basic system structures. With this idea, I've spent few months re-evaluating my goals and values and what I wanted to do in ID. My priority is to help others, and I like to observe. Therefore, I like to work on a project where I can observe and help social problems. With my skill of graphic design, keen obgervation, short understanding of business structure, method of researching, marketing, finding resources, and curiousity to learn about something unknown, I am excited to take this studio, and learn about UN Millenium Goals, USSG, third world country, and study and help non profit organization.

its open

2008-09-13T07:55:00.001-07:00

i have created a blog