Stanford Seeking Project Partners for Design for Extreme Affordability

A friend of mine who organizes Stanford’s Design School course called Design for Extreme Affordability is seeking project partners for the 2018 course. Here is information about the call for partners:

The Design for Extreme Affordability team at Stanford University is looking for project partners for their 2017-2018 course. Design for Extreme Affordability (aka “Extreme”) is a graduate level course at Stanford’s d.school or design school. Students spend 2 quarters (January-June) designing products and services that serve the needs of their partner organizations. Examples of Extreme projects that have been implemented in the real world include:

  • miraclefeet brace, a new affordable and high quality clubfoot treatment device that is being manufactured and distributed by the partner organization, miraclefeet

  • EarthEnable, an organization installing healthy and affordable earthen floors for families who cannot afford a cement floor, link to their website

  • Noora Health, a program that trains family members of surgery patients to assist in the rehabilitation of their patient, improving patient outcomes by freeing up nursing time and equipping families with basic health expertise, link to their website

  • Amaize, now known as Sanku, a micronutrient dosing machine that has been implemented by the partner organization, Project Healthy Children, and easily fits onto existing small scale mills to improve diets via milled grains for malnourished populations

The Extreme teaching team is currently in their annual search process for partners for the 2017-18 course. We are looking for partners:

  • that work directly with Base of Pyramid individuals in developing economies

  • whose customers or constituents have a need that might be solved by a new product or service

  • that want to engage with human-centered design students from multidisciplinary backgrounds with a passion for serving the world’s poor

To help you understand the course and what it is like to work with us, here are two resources: A partner guide describes the course and what a partnership entails (link here: http://extreme.stanford.edu/download-extreme-partner-guide)

A recent profile of our founding professor, Jim Patell, and the course on Sanjay Gupta’s “The Next List” on CNN. The full episode (which follows the class from 2013) can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/69203035.

Stanford will be making partnership decisions on a rolling basis. If you are interested in partnering, please contact Nell Turner nell@stanford.edu and let her know that you learned of this opportunity through me (@miaschmid).

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