Welcome to our April newsletter - it’s a Birthday bonanza!

This month Here I Am turns 3 and we’re both looking forward, and reflecting, on our 3 years of including the excluded.

Happy Girls in ICT Day

Firstly, serendipitously, we’ve just celebrated International Girls in ICT Day on the 25th April. The theme this year was leadership, so as a female owned design and tech studio, we took pride in joining the conversation. It was a great opportunity for all members of the Here I Am (87.5% female) team to ask their burning questions to our founders Laura and Vi, on their experiences being women in the sector. Have a read of their answers on our blog, or feel free to join the conversation on Linkedin with your own questions.

Read our blog post

Redesigning our process

As part of our Birthday celebrations we’re also reflecting on the way we do things — both from a design perspective and more broadly across our whole process. We’re taking a retrospective look at what we’ve achieved over the past 3 years, and the challenges we have overcome, and redesigning our process with a focus on the following themes;

• How can we support our partners to always prioritise ongoing measurement — post product launch, despite limitations of fluctuating funding
• How can we ensure that every member of the team, both within our partner organisations and at Here I Am, is an expert in the research insights that are shaping the project
• How can we support our partners to understand and prioritise the value of good design on the overall success and impact of the project

All of this is culminating in the launch of our new design process, which we can’t wait to share with you next month.

Advocating for ‘good design’ in the humanitarian sector

Finally, as part of this process, you might have seen our ‘take down’ of the perceived value - and in turn lack of attention - given to good design in the humanitarian sector. We’d love to hear from you. Have you fought to make space and time for good design in a project recently?

We’re proud to be part of a community of designers that are disrupting the sector with the introduction of good, thoughtful, accessible design. We encourage everyone in our network to join the movement and make a case for good design in the humanitarian sector.

Read our blog post

Thanks for joining Here I Am on our journey. We can’t wait to see what waves we can make as we enter toddler-hood.

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