The Aga Khan Foundation's human-centered design work on the Schools2030 initiative has been honored by the Fast Company 2021 Innovation by Design Awards for most innovative educational design.
Since 2019, Design Professor and Director of the Center for Integrated Design Gray Garmon has been working with the Aga Khan Foundation alongside Andrew Cunningham, Munir Ahmad, Bronwen Magrath and Katie Krummeck.
The project was featured in an article for the 2020 Journal of Design and Creative Technologies entitled "One Design Process. 10 Countries. 1,000 Schools. Endless Opportunity." Read an excerpt here:
"In the fall of 2019, the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), an international development organization and agency of the Aga Khan Development Network, asked us to co-create a design-based innovation process for public schools around the world. Specifically, these schools were participants in the Schools2030 initiative—a globally informed, locally rooted 10-year learning improvement program working with 1,000 pioneering preschools, primary schools, and secondary schools across 10 countries on four continents.
This initiative is funded by a coalition of nine private education philanthropic partners to support teachers, school leaders and students to develop and design solutions that promote holistic, quality learning for all. This effort is inspired by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals set to be reached by 2030.
While the initiative and the scale of potential impact were exciting to us as designers, the real question for us was: how do we co-create a set of tools that can help produce meaningful design work led by those closest to the challenges they were facing? This article tells the story of the development and deployment of these resources, as well as the early signs that they are making a difference."