Today we are covering something that many may feel does not relate directly to design, but design can learn lessons from the small and peaceful country of Costa Rica, a country in Central America, and the first in the world to abolish its standing army.
One person’s intention can change the way thousands of others live. In 1948, after just five weeks of civil war, the leader, Jose Figueres, announced, “'The Regular Army of Costa Rica today gives the key to its military base to the schools ... The Government hereby declares the National Army officially abolished.” As a result, the nation’s resources were transferred into more worthy causes; namely, the improvement of healthcare and education. The country’s military bases became schools. Figueres also banned the Communist Party, gave women the right to vote, granted black immigrants full citizenship, and established a presidential term limit. Figueres nationalized the banks in order to promote economic diversity and eliminate coffee grower's control over the banking system. For decades, the elite coffee growers had dominated Costa Rican society and economy. Figueres also created The Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
Today Costa Rica has the highest standard of living in Central and South America. There is ‘cradle to the grave’ healthcare for all Costa Ricans, with special services for women, children and seniors. Costa Rica has the second highest literacy rate of 96%, in Latin and South America, and an average life expectancy of more than 75 years. Costa Rica has no enemies or terrorism, and the last elections saw a voter turnout of 90%, a lot more than what most countries can boast of.
Costa Rica’s neighbours are struggling with civil war, military repression and poverty. Dr. Oscar Arias Sanchez, who was President of Costa Rica from 1986-1990, and 2006 to present, advocates education and vehemently believes too many countries sacrifice education to fund armies. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his work to establish peace and democracy in the region.
Costa Rica translates as ‘rich coast’, and the nation lives up to its name. It is near the top in the Human Developmental Index, the Environmental Performance Index, the Happy Planet Index, and is also the greenest country in the world. Former President Rodrigo Carazo Odio comments that, "Costa Ricans have cultivated a civilized spirit, a spirit opposed to militarization and violence. Armed with this spirit, the people are capable of seeking peaceful solutions to conflicts and respecting the rights of others." He states that this respect has survived and flourished because "education has fostered such an attitude and because in the absence of [military] weapons with which to impose an idea, the only weapon left is reason."
Why are we covering the country of Costa Rica today, on a site called ‘design is in’? Well, because in some ways the ‘design’ of countries, institutes, states and systems, are of prime importance. Innovation in leadership is the need of the hour. Creativity, change, and innovation is most needed in governance. Design is creating holistic solutions, not short term arrangements that create a new problem in place of the old one. Design is also about having the vision to take a bold step, even if it means doing something no one has done before, trading immediate economic gain, and power domination for more meaningful benefits, for countless future generations.
Hats off to you Costa Rica, hope there are more courageous enough to go your way.
By Armeen Kapadia
 Local radio broadcasting farming information In 1970, a Canadian journalist George Atkins visited Africa and he found that Africa's farmers had ideas, but couldn't communicate those ideas because of barriers such as distance, language and literacy. He believed that radio could break those barrier.
While the Internet is being considered as the medium to spur revolutions, many have forgotten radio. The Internet is for not everyone since most of the content is either in English, Spanish or French. Many Africans don't have access to Internet. In this context, sharing information through radio is cheap and effective. Radio is often considered to be a one-way medium, but African Farm Radio Research Initiative (AFRRI) is combining radio and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to gather content and to share information among farming communities throughout rural africa.
More than half of Africa's population is dependent on agriculture. Farmers in Africa are in need of information on farming. For instance, they want to know where they can buy improved seeds for the next season, where to sell their crops or how to keep the soil fertile.
Many farmers in Africa often share information through formal networks such as cooperatives and associations. The information shared here is limited. Outside the community, farmers depend on local radio. Over the recent years, the radio stations across Africa have grown rapidly. There are more than 500 radio stations in Mali, Ghana and Uganda put together. At the same time, the use of mobile phones throughout Africa is growing too. This has helped the radio presenter to encourage listeners to send in text messages requesting answers to their queries.
Most farmers now know that Cayenne pepper discourages elephants from grazing on farm fields or the fact that placing a lit candle in a container of grain before sealing it deprives pests of oxygen. Such insights could not be shared easily until radio became a mainstream medium in Africa.
By Sanjay Basavaraju
The refuse from discarded electronic products, e-waste, end up in landfills or incinerators. In today’s ‘use and throw’ philosophy, the amount of e-waste is constantly increasing to alarming levels. It’s easier to buy a new computer, than upgrade your old one, or so most people think. Alex Lin, at age 13, started a progamme in his community to reduce e-waste by refurbishing discarded computers and providing them to families unable to afford electronic equipment.
Alex, from Westerly, Rhode Island, USA, formed Westerly Innovations Network (WIN) in 2002. He explains in the video how improper waste encompasses a lot of things, like burning, burying, and exporting. In the average computer monitor, there is 4 to 8 pounds of lead, there is also mercury, cadmium, and the plastic cases themselves, all causing severe health defects. Earlier, all the residents of Westerly were dumping their e-waste in the landfill. With a few phone calls, and some effort, they set up a receptacle at a certain point, where people could dump their computers, protecting the crops, water and environment.
The WIN team then meets once in a week in Alex’s basement to refurbish the computers. Alex feels that recycling is much more efficient than buying new pieces. They get donations from corporations and banks, and sometimes have to replace hard drives, RAMs etc. After refurbishing, the computers are usually given to people in Westerly who don’t have computers. They also sent computers to Sri Lanka after the tsunami, where they were used in an education centre.
Later the WIN team also made a presentation to the State Legislation, and because of their efforts today improper disposal of e-waste in Rhode Island is illegal. You can see Alex’s speech at the Youth Brower Awards, 2007. Today the WIN team works with people in Sri Lanka, Cameroon and Mexico. They effectively created a system that deals with several problems, those of e-waste, environmental damage, and increased access to computers for poorer sections of society. As Alex says, this is a small step in changing the way the country, and even the world deals with waste.
By Armeen Kapadia
Education needs experiments. In India, especially, we need something entirely different. Digital StudyHall (DSH) is on an experimental trail. They describe their approach as an education equivalent of Netflix + YouTube + Kazaa.
Live classes by the best grassroots teachers are recorded on video and then stored on computer discs, which are distributed to rural schools. Education experts are working in tandem with computer scientists to explore pedagogic approaches in the rural context.
Firstly, DSH is focusing on creating a video database of everything. (usually in the local language) Going a step ahead, they have structured the sequencing of these videos to fit into the current state board curriculums so that any school can use it. Some of the best teachers have recorded their discourses. What they have done here is go beyond the flash-ware and slide-ware kind of modules. This approach believes that teachers are still a prime agent in the learning environment. Although the output is aligned to the syllabus, the teachers have re-interpreted the syllabus in terms of interactivity.
Secondly, DSH adopts a decentralized network. Although content is produced and disseminated for local use, it is shared with the other towns and cities. The videos are recorded in the contextual learning environment instead of recording it in schools in cities. The relevance of content is key in creating this database.
Thirdly, the school needs a tv, dvd player and an inverter. They know that children can't learn by just watching videos. They have adopted mediation-based pedagogy. It means that there is a mediator, usually a teacher, between the students and the TV. The mediator pauses the video and engages children in activities, games, even a q&a session.
Lastly, the web2.0 application that they have developed doesn't require physcial infrastructure. The computer discs are transported by the postal system.
Digital StudyHall works best in the Indian context. It is striving to break new ground in schools across India.
By Sanjay Basavaraju
 M-Pesa affiliate A banking transaction usually involves filling out forms, waiting in queue, and going from one counter to another. That’s if you are lucky and live in a city. If you are in village, you may live hours, or days away from your nearest bank. M-Pesa is a mobile phone based service that is changing all that by allowing users to perform basic banking transactions without visiting the bank branch.
The facility is offered by Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom, an affiliate of Vodafone. The system works through a network of agents, who operate bank accounts through their handsets. For example, to deposit money in your account, you go to an agent who will use his agent handset to deposit e-money in your account in exchange for cash that you give him. You can send or transfer money to any other mobile phone user, even if they are not a Safaricom subscriber. You can withdraw money with the agent, irrespective of whether you are an M-Pesa registered customer or not. You can withdraw money from any M-PESA agent outlet or participating ATM network. You can also buy Safaricom airtime, and pay bills. Other basic facilities such as checking your balance, changing your PIN or secret word, or selecting a different language are also possible. All these operations are explained here, and its easy to see how simple these operations are to perform, even in remote areas.
‘Pesa’ is Swahili for cash, and M stands for mobile, which explains this service pretty well. It is doing away with the need for a customer to have a bank account, and cross great distances to perform basic transactions. Instead, it is using the medium of the mobile phone, the use of which is widespread and growing rapidly in many developing nations, to move money quickly and securely. The big hurdle of living miles from the bank branch is removed, as agents can operate in every village if needed.
M-Pesa has won global awards for its service. Over 5 million customers now subscribe to M-PESA in Kenya. It has been launched in Tanzania and Afghanistan, with plans to expand into India, Egypt and South Africa. The M-Pesa money transfer system marries technology, network, and culture to provide an essential service to millions of people.
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
 Ory Okolloh's idea: Ushahidi When there is a crisis, such as an earthquake or riots, a major part of the problem is the lack of valid up-to-date news on the situation. Ushahidi, which means ‘testimony’ in Swahili, is a platform all of us can use, to send information during a crisis. Ushahidi is a free and open source project with developers hailing from Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Netherlands and the USA working on it.
Ushahidi uses the simple technique of ‘crowdsourcing’, which allows large amounts of information sent by SMS, email, or the web to get aggregated and shown on a site, as a map or a timeline. Anyone can download the Ushahidi engine and run it on their own servers. This can be effectively used at times of riots, and would be particularly useful in India too, where accurate information is not available when people need it the most. You can see projects that Ushahidi has enabled here.
A Kenyan blogger Ory Okolloh, started Ushahidi as a citizen journalist effort during deadly post-election rioting in Kenya. Since its inception the software has been used in several parts of Africa such as the Congo, South Africa, Malawi, and has been recently used to track the swine flu outbreak and the recent Indian elections as seen on the website. Ushahidi helps get the immediate relief to zones of trouble, especially needed when news agencies are not in the area. A similar open-source software Sahana was used after the Sri Lanka tsunami in December 2004, the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, the 2006 mudslide in the Philippines, and earthquakes in Peru and China.
Ushahidi uses a free software called Frontline SMS that turns a mobile or laptop into a text broadcasting hub. Once an sms is sent, the message goes to the web administrator’s inbox, who can then reply to verify the message, or send a mass message out to large numbers of people, or post the information onto a Web page with location information from Google Maps (or do all three) as explained here.
Ushahidi, as well as Ory’s own site Mzalendo, which helps increase transparency of the Kenyan Parliament, are essential to the spread of awareness and awakening of the Kenyan people. Such movements have far reaching impact, and can help many developing nations where technology can be effectively used to give power to the people. Technology can be used to propagate hatred and unrest, or provide much needed information and awakening, which is what these web platforms are enabling. Ushahidi, being an open source engine, can grow and adapt to the web, and to newer technologies and websites.
The founder Ory Okolloh is a native of Kenya with a Havard law degree. From a poor family, she knew what it was not to have enough money. Her parents struggled to put her in a good school, and she missed getting her place in her dream high school due to corruption. Her family didn’t have enough money, or the right last name, or contacts. Her father died of AIDS in 1999, but never told anyone about the disease because of the social ostracism that would come with it.
Today, she feels, Africans need to get better at telling their stories and images of Africa in the press focus on just the negative things. As she says, it’s not enough for us to criticize; we all need to think about what actions we’re willing to take: “My dream is for my daughter to find her future in Africa.”
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
 British firefighters sporting newly designed suits Firefighters battle all kinds of circumstances, from extreme fire and flood to rescuing kittens from the drain. Since they are meant to protect civilians during disasters, how can they safeguard their own lives? The only savior is their uniform. The firefighters in Britain can be soon seen sporting a brand new uniform, which is much more efficient than the old one.
Firebuy Limited was established in 2006 to deliver English Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) procurement at a national level. It is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) and after the thorough evaluation of bids submitted by companies world-wide, Bristol Uniforms Ltd was selected as the service provider.
Although the design brief was clear, the design had to have a fine balance in function. These points influenced the design:
Protection (from heat and flame)
Lightweight (for carrying someone)
Supple (to move away from falling debris)
Trust (for the public to accept)
The end result had to find a fine balance between advanced technology and common sense. Two biggest challenges were to make the uniform efficient, and to make the firefighters more easily identifiable by the public. Another challenge was to coordinate the suit with the clothing worn beneath it.
For the first time women firefighters get to wear suits that are custom designed for them. As of now the suits come in 28 different sizes. Many a time, women firefighters were encouraged to discontinue from the service since the smallest of the gloves or footwear were too big and reduced their efficiency at work. Although women in service only account to just more than 3% of the total firefighters in Britain, the fact that a suit has been designed for pregnant firefighters, it is a major step in encouraging women to join the service.
Minority groups are also to benefit from the new design. Extras such as turbans and hijabs have been designed. In an official press release, Fire minister Sadiq Khan said: “The uniform now available shows that cultural beliefs are being recognized, as we seek to increase the representation of ethnic minorities within service.”
The challenge was also to bring in consistency of style. At present, firefighter uniforms vary across Britain. This adds to the confusion. The new design would create a national uniform of red and gray station clothing, and muted gold fire suits.
It is believed that firefighters spend only 10% of their time dealing with emergencies. The other 90% of the time they are gaining public trust. The new suit surely does help when dealing with emergencies, and with time it may also become a national identity that the public would be proud of.
The design, we feel, is the step towards addressing issues such as equality and diversity in work environments.
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
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