How I Localized the Design Thinking Process to Solve Problems in the School and the Community

As a TFN Fellow 2018, I was placed at Shree Ma Vi Bijaybasti, Thori-4, Parsa. It is a rural buffer zone surrounded by Parsa National Park on the North, Chitwan National Park on the West and Balmiki Tiger Reserve of India on the South. Indian border is less than a kilometer away. Lack of physical infrastructures, roads and communication has made this part of Nepal inaccessible. However, recently some initiatives have been taken from both government as well as private sector to revamp the area. Talking about the community, people are engaged in Tobacco Farming and foreign employment in gulf countries. Tobacco farming has created a viscous cycle of poverty, diseases and death. There is also danger of Human Elephant conflict, as the community is surrounded by forest. Every year there is huge loss of crops, property and even human life.

After spending some time at the school as?TFN?Fellow 2018, it became clear that there was some underlying problem, why the students were not able to gain significant achievements academically. If we see other parts of Nepal, the major problem is drop out rates and absenteeism. It was not the case here. Every child form the community used to come school daily. After several rounds of differentiated personal interviews, regular home visits and extensive group discussions with the students, parents, existing teachers and community members, finally the main problem began to surface. Those problems were rooted deep into the system and culture of the community. To bring greater impact those problems needed to be solved. There were solutions, but we needed to find them. Simply coping innovative solutions applied in some part of the world did not work here. We had to find solution with low resources in a rural setting.

I had first known about?Design Thinking?while I was in college. I was researching for a new project and seeking new ideas. Design Thinking seemed effective in problem solving. I also gained some experience on design thinking during the Learning Institute 2018. In our subject group session, under the guidance of our Science Trainer, Hom Bahadur Thapa, we were divided into groups, and we did follow design thinking process. The design thinking process was fun and engaging also with working with the real world problems and finding their practical solutions. According to Tim Brown of IDEO, Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. Design Thinking is a five step process, that involves Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. Design thinking is a powerful set of problem solving strategies that encourages critical thinking,?creativity?and collaboration.

During the time of my fellowship, I did not limit myself to just Design Thinking for problem solving. We had to face problems everyday in the classroom, in the staff room and in the community. Each problem was different and they could not be tackled with a single strategy. Every problem required different set of skills and different way of thinking. Different strategies were implemented for different problems. The value of Sense of Urgency, wanted us to solve the problem instantly while Sense of Agency made us the front face of problem solving. We worked hard to solve those problems. We had to prioritize the problems that needed to be addressed. Even some setbacks were faced by us, maybe the mindset of the stakeholders. Other reason maybe our lack of experience in such type of problem solving. I don’t know. However, I am sharing some of the success story where we applied the process of Design Thinking.

National STEAM Camp 2018

On a very short notice, we participated in National STEAM Camp organized by Karkhana and US Embassy. We were the only team from Province No. 2. In the 3 day event, I as a supervisor and other three students participated in the event. The event included lot of brain storming, learning, engaging and fun activities. It was more focused on solving the Sustainable Development Goals. Each team had to first find out the problems in their community, relate it with the SDGs and design effective solutions of the problems. Elephants raiding crops and killing people was the major problem we were facing back in the community. We decided to work on the project that would save not only crops and human beings but also elephants. Elephants also needed protection, as irate farmers used dangerous methods to chase elephants, sometimes even killing them. Using design thinking process, we built a prototype of a project named “Elephant Detection Alarm”. The 3 level protection system not only protected crops and farmers but also used to ward off elephants. We returned back home as the winner of Team Work Category.

The Problem Of Drinking Water

Being a buffer zone in central Terai, the temperature rises sometimes 45 degree Celsius in summer. The level of ground water is so low that it is difficult to bore tube wells. Rivers have dried up and there is no dependable water resource near to the community. However, with the active participation of the community, there is a overhead water tank. The overhead water tank provides water 3 times a day for 2 hours each to the community. Facility of water is accessible only to a handful of households in the community; larger population is deprived of safe drinking water. How can a school with 700+ students and 30 member staff team manage with a need-to-be-repaired water tank of 1000 liters.

Due to lack of funds, we could not install larger tanks and also limited water stored needed to be distributed to the community as well. It was a huge problem as lack of drinking water started creating problems in the daily classroom activities as well as performance of the students. We had work with the limited resources we had. Design Thinking came to our rescue. We figured out how our water was being used in the school. Rather than sole purpose of drinking, most of the water was used to wash hands and legs of students, who came to school walking, wearing slippers via dusty roads. We initiated the rule of wearing shoes which prevented students from washing their legs, and bringing personal bottle to the classroom. This rule provided temporary solution to our drinking water problem.

Balancing Energy of the Students

Imagine a class of full of more than 50 teenagers. Teenagers are full of energy and excitement. Students spend more than 6 hours in a school setting. School is the place where they meet with their friends, both from near and far. This is the time in which they feel at peak of their life. Nothing can stop them. They bring their teenage energy into the classroom. As a result class becomes chaotic. Plus lack of interest in studies adds to it. The class becomes uncontrollable and noisy. Release of energy inside the classroom, combined with other students, disrupts not only teaching learning process but also compromises discipline, behavior and mindset of students.

Initially some rules were set to make the classroom less noisy and maintain discipline of the students. However, these rules became ineffective after some time. Why these rules could not be effective is a different story. It was hitting us hard. I thought to give Design Thinking a try. The results amazed us. The real reason was that, there were no activities in school during free time, which students could utilize to release energy. As a result, they used to make talk and laugh inside the class, which made the class noisy. Lack of funds prevented us from buying sports equipment as lack of wide open space was another problem. What we did that we installed old used Tires in the middle of the school and let the creativity flow. Students started playing with the tires and became bit exhausted. Due to which they started to talk less in the classroom and classes started running smoothly.

Global Children’s Designathon 2019

Global Children’s Designathon is organized every year in 100+ cities around the world. In Nepal, it is organized by?Karkhana. I along with three students participated in this event after economic obstacles. We were the only team from outside of the valley. The event was attended was more than 30 schools. My students from rural village were overwhelmed, just by seeing the uniform of other schools. They lost confidence and felt themselves inferior. Overnight bus ride had made us physically weak. My sense of responsibility increased. The theme of this year was food and climate. We had done some design thinking session back in the school before the event. We worked on the project of “Agricultural Land Use Pattern in Human Elephant Conflict Areas”. Rather than detecting elephants, which we did earlier, this project focused on prevention of elephant barging into the community. We won the most impactful project award.

National Bhawishya STEAM Challenge 2019

Organized By Karkhana and Ministry of Science and Technology, National STEAM Challenge is the largest school level event in Nepal. It attracts talents and creativity of students from all around Nepal. Projects built by the students in this challenge are excellent. Until this event, we had multiple sessions on design thinking back in school to improvise our project. We went into the community, carried out intensive interviews, hearing stories. Again in the school, we held discussions and finally created four prototypes of the project. Students also presented their projects. Earlier we relied on technology, but this time we focused on low cost, economical and sustainable solution. This time we put Nature into work. Our project titled, ”Agricultural Land Use Pattern in Human Elephant Conflict and Tobacco Farming Areas”. Our project not only prevented elephants to barge into the community but also provided employment to the community members as well as alternative to the killer crop, i.e. Tobacco farming. We got appreciated in two categories, Best Community Impact and Best Aesthetics, a rare feat.