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Description

MOST INNOVATIVE SOLUTION AWARD

Our project is designed to serve as a means for speakers of different languages to communicate using pictorial icons, particularly to serve basic needs such as food and water. At a refugee camp or other first point of contact, a volunteer or aid worker can be wearing a t-shirt, giving away blankets, or using flash cards with the symbols printed on them and the refugee can communicate their needs.

Nexus Maximus IV

The Challenge: Innovation for Refugees and Displaced Populations

One of the great challenges of our time is how to help refugees and displaced populations, and how to prevent the causes in the first place. Every minute, 24 people around the world are forced to flee their homes. That’s 34,000 people a day who leave everything behind in the hope of finding safety and a better tomorrow. The impact of war, political, racial and religious conflict, and environmental crises of famine and climate change, have caused great suffering and there is a great opportunity to do better.

The issues these populations and the countries who receive them face are diverse and complex. They include public health, housing/built environment, cultural integration, public safety, employment/economic and more.

How can innovation address these challenges? How do we create the social systems and products to support a healthy, safe and integrated program for refugees? How do we address the physical, emotional, and social needs of refugees to restore hope and opportunity? The solutions may be as far ranging as the challenges, exploring the acute needs during a crisis, as well as the chronic needs of the permanently displaced; looking at immigration and adjustments to new cultures. We encourage participants to draw upon all disciplines, from health professions to architecture, engineering to design, ethics, communication and every way of thinking we have, to find better ways to innovate on physical solutions, processes, policies, systems, and more.

Recap of poster presentations

Publication Date

9-11-2017

Keywords

refugee, icons, aid, graphic design, Nexus Maximus, Thomas Jefferson University

Disciplines

Industrial and Product Design | Medicine and Health Sciences

Document Type

Poster

Amicus: Communication across languages

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