Design thinking + safe water: workshop report from Mexico

Cross-posted from the Global Health Ideas blog:

As promised earlier, here is a brief account about the design+water workshop I conducted in Mexico in June.

Two months ago, I was in La Paz, Mexico at NGO Fundación Cántaro Azul, helping them build organizational capacity in human-centered design (HCD).  Cántaro Azul works to improve access to safe water and sanitation for disadvantaged communities, not only in Baja California Sur, but in other parts of Mexico, and abroad. Their interest in HCD is two-fold: to improve existing initiatives and to innovate new approaches.

I recently completed the workshop final report for the organization. In the hopes that the work may be helpful to others, I'm posting the synopsis of the report here, along with some workshop photos. If you're interested in accessing the report, please contact me directly.

Design thinking workshop final report: Safe water options with rural community stores in BCS 

Fundación Cántaro Azul • La Paz, Baja California Sur, México 

Jaspal S. Sandhu, Ph.D. • July 2009 

This document describes the outcomes of a week-long design thinking workshop held at Fundación Cántaro Azul (FCA) in La Paz in June 2009. The workshop aimed to build design thinking capacity at the organization while working on a problem of actual importance to FCA. The most important practical outcomes of this workshop were two complementary models for providing a clean, affordable drinking water choice for rural people in Baja California Sur via community stores. The primary audience for this document is FCA. It is intended to help them with ongoing activities focused on the community store model and in incorporating this approach in their various activities. The workshop was designed and facilitated by Jaspal Sandhu, the report author. Workshop funding was provided by the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Shown below: Field research during Day 2 and Day 3 of the workshop. Top to bottom: (1) Using an auto-servicio system in La Paz; (2) interviewing a user at a rural, government-run purificadora in San Antonio; (3) debriefing after the San Antonio research; (4) and obtaining water samples to test from a home in Rosario.

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As promised earlier [LINK], here is a brief report about the workshop I conducted in Mexico in June.

Two months ago, I was in La Paz, Mexico at NGO Fundación Cántaro Azul, helping them build organizational capacity in human-centered design (HCD).  Cántaro Azul works to improve access to safe water and sanitation for disadvantaged communities, not only in Baja California Sur, but in other parts of Mexico, and abroad. Their interest in HCD is two-fold: to improve existing initiatives and to innovate new approaches.

I recently completed the workshop final report for the organization. In the hopes that the work may be helpful to others, I'm posting the synopsis of the report here. If you're interested in accessing the report, please contact me directly.

Design thinking workshop final report: 

Safe water options with rural community stores in BCS 

Fundación Cántaro Azul • La Paz, Baja California Sur, México 

Jaspal S. Sandhu, Ph.D. • July 2009 

Synopsis. This document describes the outcomes of a week-long design thinking workshop held at Fundación Cántaro Azul (FCA) in La Paz in June 2009. The workshop aimed to build design thinking capacity at the organization while working on a problem of actual importance to FCA. The most important practical outcomes of this workshop were two complementary models for providing a clean, affordable drinking water choice for rural people in Baja California Sur via community stores. The primary audience for this document is FCA. It is intended to help them with ongoing activities focused on the community store model and in incorporating this approach in their various activities. The workshop was designed and facilitated by Jaspal Sandhu, the report author. Workshop funding was provided by the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley. 

FIG3 PHOTOS ASxxxx