International Development Design Summit

The International Development Design Summit (IDDS) will be convening its 8^th annual summit this year in Arusha, Tanzania from July 7 to August 9, 2014.  This year's IDDS has been uniquely timed to funnel into the Nane Nane Agricultural Fair, an annual local showcasing event that occurs August 8.
 
The month long, bi-lingual summit aims to bring together participants from all disciplines and nationalities and teach them how to walk through the design cycle – including prototyping and, potentially, scaling – in a developing context.  IDDS participants will learn how to effectively work in diverse groups with local communities, how to co-create low-cost technologies that improve livelihoods, and how to move forward with and/or pivot a prototype or venture idea.  
 
At the end of the summit, participants will also learn how to connect with a global network of innovators and utilize resources available to IDIN members.  The sessions will be taught through a series of intense, hands-on activities led by the University of California Davis as well as partners from Colorado State University, the United States International University in Nairobi, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a group of several highly-skilled local innovators.
 
The summit will be largely based at the Njiro Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA) on the outskirts of Arusha town in the northern part of Tanzania in Eastern Africa.  For a majority of the summit, participants, organizers, and instructors will stay with roommates in the dormitories and eat at the cafeteria available on-campus.  However, participants will make two community visits with organizers in which they will stay in local communities – likely with little to no electricity or water access and latrine style toilets – for a few days at a time while they work together with local innovators on particular projects.
 
There will be approximately 8-10 project groups that will be given a small amount of background information and research helpful to each group as they begin to walk from problem definition to prototyping.  Each project group will comprise 5-6 participants and a design facilitator/organizer.  Each design facilitator will work with two groups throughout the summit to guide them through the design process as a team.  By the end of the summit, participant groups will have the opportunity to present – to the local community and the broader public – the prototypes, next steps, as well as what they learned from the process.
 
If you have questions, please email the organizing team  at  .
 
IDDS is a function of the International Development Innovation Network (IDIN), a consortium of institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Olin College of Engineering, Colorado State University, University of California in Davis, University of Sao Paulo in Brasil, KNUST in Ghana, and NTBC in Zambia. IDIN is sponsored by the Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN), a USAID initiative to improve science, technology, and innovation.