About
The MIT COVID19 Challenge : Africa Takes on COVID-19 was an internationally organised virtual Hackathon hosted by MIT.
Over the course of two days, multi-disciplinary teams collaborated to develop innovative solutions that could help address the COVID-19 crisis. The focus was on connecting teams with the tools and resources needed to develop mature solutions that could be implemented by event partners. After the Challenge, selected teams had the opportunity to bring their solutions to life with the support of the partners.
The event was held on May 1-3, 2020. In this 48-hour virtual event, teams helped tackle the most critical unmet needs caused by the COVID-19 outbreak in Africa.
Summary
Being part of a globally distributed team, we first mapped out our areas of interest and the knowledge we had about them. Following this, we voted on the approach we wanted to take
and started primary and secondary research, to gather our insights. I helped in conducting primary research, by making international calls to organizations in Zimbabwe who would be potential stakeholders in our system design plan. Then, I began creating illustrations and mockups that described our proposed system. Finally, our team presented the system proposal virtually to the hackathon participants, and we were given an ‘honorable mention’ by the judges.
and started primary and secondary research, to gather our insights. I helped in conducting primary research, by making international calls to organizations in Zimbabwe who would be potential stakeholders in our system design plan. Then, I began creating illustrations and mockups that described our proposed system. Finally, our team presented the system proposal virtually to the hackathon participants, and we were given an ‘honorable mention’ by the judges.
The first step was to select a topic and form teams. The topic I chose was -
How to safely transition local, available manufacturing capacity to meet the need of rise in demand for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), hand sanitizer, and other essential medical supplies, rather than import everything. Meanwhile, as demand for certain consumer goods decreases, to find a way to re-purpose supply chains and factories to produce these essential supplies.
After this, a few interested people pitched their ideas for the topic and the rest chose who's pitch they aligned with and wanted to team up with. My team was a diverse and geographically spread out team that consisted of - Nancy Kasvosve (Netherlands), Daniella Banda (Tennessee,USA), J.B. Kalin (Massachusetts, USA), Nicola Pilia (Tortolì, Italy) and me, Calvin J Stanley (Bangalore, India).
Team Faith for the Future
Hypothesis
Local leadership such as religious organizations and chieftainships wield a lot
of power and influence in African society outside of the government. Religious organizations in particular are a source of comfort and information during the COVID-19 crisis. We want to leverage their authority to mobilize and activate communities towards education, production, and distribution of personal protective equipment in the fight against COVID-19
of power and influence in African society outside of the government. Religious organizations in particular are a source of comfort and information during the COVID-19 crisis. We want to leverage their authority to mobilize and activate communities towards education, production, and distribution of personal protective equipment in the fight against COVID-19
Final System Design
Roughly 85% of Zimbabweans are religious with over 60% attending church regularly. Christianity is the predominant religion. Through this system plan, we looked into using churches to form COVID-19 action teams to mobilize people with the necessary skills for education, production, and distribution of masks and hand sanitizers in Harare, Zimbabwe in a grassroots effort to localize the response and provide employment opportunities for people who have lost their income in the crisis.
Coming to this hackathon and after choosing my topic, I wanted to propose for a way to locally manufacture face masks, not just as a health requirement, but also look at it from a cultural perspective and since Zimbabwe is known for various kinds of prints, in some way try to look into that.
I studied more about the kinds of textiles and forms of prints in Zimbabwe and came across Kudhinda Prints (a form of screen printing), and Sadza Batik (a method of making textiles with porridge-like paste of maize or wheat-meal, instead of using Batik wax).
Shown below are Kudhinda fabrics designed by Ros Byrne and produced by her expert team of printers in her Harare studio.
Using these prints as an inspiration, I created some Face Mask mockups as shown below.
Following this, my team and I assigned various tasks to each one of us. Since Daniella and Nancy were native to Harare, they used their connects to gain as much information as they could regarding the situation on the ground. I too joined in on one of the calls where we spoke to Ms. Tendai Nekatambe, a teacher in a technical college in Hwange (800kms from Harare), who's stitching students took up the initiative to make masks for the community. When I asked why not use a colourful/patterned face mask, I gathered a rather interesting insight from the call with Ms. Nekatambe. She said, "..a white face mask encourages people to wash it because it gets visibly dirty and a clean mask is very important.." Thus, we dropped the idea of a cultural pattern on the mask.
We also got in touch with a mask making entrepreneur, Ms. Paidamoyo Chideya as well as a church representative Rev. Fr. Selemani, who shed light on their areas of expertise and gave us insights on our plan. Through these calls we got a lot of information about the logistics and the kind of skills and equipment present on ground.
J.B. Kalin from our team, was in charge of finding out more statistical data from secondary research. Nicola also helped with secondary research and was in charge of making the final presentation template and compiling it all in.
I was in charge of creating all graphics and mockups used to explain the proposed system plan, as well as create a visual system map. Apart from this, I was also a part of the primary and secondary research phases.
Below are some of the graphics and visuals I created.
Campaign poster to recruit citizens
Mockup of Whatsapp message that Church figure sends to his congregation
Ecosystem play between stakeholders
Visually represented system map
Below are the slides from the final pitch presentation, that had a 3 minute limit and was done over a Zoom call in front of all the participants.
Taking part in this virtual hackathon was a great experience as it gave me exposure to working with people across the globe and from different backgrounds, as well as exposure to a whole new country, Zimbabwe and how its people, culture, government is and how resourceful the country can be made if looked through the right lens.
I was also very glad to put my skills as a designer to the test, in terms of the primary research interview I conducted, the ideation of the system, the creation of graphics, and mockups as well as conveying information visually.
Overall it was truly enriching and informative.