Empowering women through design
Women contribute half of the world’s population by virtue of an accident of birth, perform two-thirds of the world’s work, receive one-tenth of its income and owns less than one-hundredth of its property. Access to knowledge and learning for girls in under privileged societies will provide a new sense of empowerment to women of the next generation, who can then talk and teach about principles of sustainability, conservation, meaningful use of resources and equality, from a global perspective.
This project, based in Blacksburg,VA. looks at the possibility of employing Industrial Design to identify, explore and come up with solutions that can help the poor accomplish some of the seemingly difficult tasks like maintaining accounts for a small microfinance venture in their community.The project is done in conjunction with another school in India, who will be working on a similar problem, by doing this we hope to examine the possibility of designing for diffent cultures.
Professor Akshay Sharma and his students at Virginia Tech have worked on a number of projects including:
• K-Yan
You can learn more about Prof. Sharma and his work by visiting his website, Industrial Design for Learning and Empowerment. You can contact Prof. Sharma here.
 Sallyann Corn |
 Jerrod Windham |
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 Ravi Sawhney |
 Shaun Jackson |
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