Designers：

30 students at Rising Academy (Sierra Leone)

Introduction:

In 2019, President Julius Maada Bio declared sexual violence a national emergency in Sierra Leone. The cases of rape and sexual abuse in the country had escalated since the end of the civil war in 2002 and the historic Ebola outbreak in 2014. Cases of sexual and gender-based violence had increased by nearly 10% each year since 2015, and almost half of Sierra Leone's women faced sexual or physical violence during their lifetime. Worse, girls were disproportionately the target – a shocking 98% of survivors of sexual assault were under age 17. "Each month, hundreds of cases of rape and sexual assaults are being reported in this country," Mr. Bio said, "Yet, some of our families practice a culture of silence and indifference toward sexual violence, leaving victims even more traumatized." The high levels of illiteracy and poverty amongst Sierra Leonean women prevented them from upholding many of their rights, and that in 2021 Sierra Leone ranked 182nd in the United Nations Gender Inequality Index out of total of 189 countries – almost at the bottom of the list. In 2021, the 30 students, half boys and girls, approximately 15 years old at Rising Academies in Freetown participated in a design swarm in the class of Stephanie Dubrowski, under the direction of design swarm facilitator Surya Vanka, and researchers Alethea Desrosiers, Theresa S. Betancourt, Sunand Bhattacharya. They came up with innovative ideas to spread the idea of gender equality not only among their own school but across other schools.

Jury Citation: 

The boys and girls who took part in this design swarm previously had no exposure to design but demonstrated an ability to quickly adopt a designerly mindset, to tap into their lived experience to gain insights, and propose solutions that had potential for wide adoption to take on a very challenging social problem.