Sustainable Design Toolkit

In South Africa, sustainability is generally not included into the education system. Sadly, the creative sector is also not acknowledged as a source for sustainable solutions – design and craft skills are on the fringe, considered as a by-product for the country’s flourishing tourism sector. Considering a horrific unemployment rate, especially amongst young people - 45% of people aged between 18 and 35 are unemployed; there is no better time than NOW to empower young people with the information and tools to design a brighter future for themselves and their communities.

This is the motivation for the Sustainable Design Road Show, which will take information and inspiration for sustainable design to young creatives across the country in July 2011. While on this mission, the Eco Design Initiative intends to distribute educational toolkits, packed with resources, case studies, examples and references to make the subject and real examples more accessible to the South African design community
The whole Sustainable Design Toolkit will also be made available on the Eco Design Initiative’s website www.nokak.com, as an open-source resource for emerging designers all over the world!

We have invitations to visit 10 informal creative collectives, reaching about 500 informal crafters/ artisans across the country. Since this group often doesn’t have access to computers or the Internet, we would like to produce a short print run of the toolkit, in simplified form.

We also have invitations to visit 30 schools, reaching approximately 2400 students and 100 educators. If we can reach our maximum goal, we can give each of the audience a disc with the information files loaded to it.
We have a team of incredibly talented education and design specialists working on layout and content, ensuring that we really do go in with sufficient wow-factor to ignite a change in approach. To take the final step in production and to realize our ambitious goal to put the information in the hands of designers, we need your help!

Project location: South Africa