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Design Science Summer Lab 2005

Design Science Summer Lab 2005
Global Education Motivators was proud to launch this new program developed in collaboration with Medard Gabel of BigPictureSmall World and the Buckminster Fuller Institue. The Design Science Summer Lab will run every summer for the next ten years, from 2005 - 2015.

Read a recent article on the Millennium Campaign website about the Design Science Summer Lab.

About the Summer Lab:

The Design Science Summer Lab offers a groundbreaking Design program that engages students and educators in a design science methodology inspired by Buckminster Fuller and others. The Lab will be a collaborative effort aimed at developing and disseminating compelling strategies for achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals including reducing global poverty, hunger, and other unmet human needs in environmentally sustainable programs.

The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) came into being when 147 Heads of State (including George H.W. Bush) signed the Millennium Declaration at the UN in September 2000. They articulate a series of specific goals for the world between now and 2015*. They are the organizing force behind everything the UN is doing – and will be doing for the next 10 years as they are tied to this time frame for their implementation. In short, they are huge. They are playing a crucial role in organizing international development and the expenditures of hundreds of billions of dollars aimed at improving the human condition. They will only grow in importance over the coming years.

Working in partnership with the UN, The Design Science Summer Lab will be inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s global vision, perspective and methodology and will engage participants in developing solutions to critical world problems—as well as help the MDG achieve widespread attention and influence.

The goals of the intensive program include the following:

Dramatically increase student understanding of global dynamics, world resources, human trends and needs, and options for humanity’s success
Increase public understanding of these issues through disseminating both the strategies and the design science methodology used to develop them as widely as possible and in a visually compelling manner
Serve as a decentralized incubator and growing force for developing and disseminating design science techniques for complex problem solving and development of viable solutions to the worlds problems
Develop and publish strategies for making the world work for 100% of humanity each year
Facilitate the transformation of students from passive information consumers into educated activists engaged in transforming their world
Teach Fuller’s highly innovative design science methodology to as many students as possible
Design the DSSL so that it can be replicated nationally and internationally


2005 Design Science Summer Lab
Students will be given an opportunity to have a ‘hands-on’ Design Science experience resulting in concrete strategies for achieving one of more of the MDG. They will be guided through this process by the co-founder of the World Game Institute, Medard Gabel, and other experts relevant to the proposed design challenges and approaches. The program will begin with an overview of the MDG by representatives from the UN who will immerse the students in the background, development, progress and current hurdles of the MDG.
Outcome
The results of this DSL will include the development of a comprehensive strategy for reaching one of the Millennium Development Goals: Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. The strategy will include a list of needed resources and actors, costs, sources of funding, and critical path for implementation. The MDG strategy will be documented in written form so that is can be part of an article, monograph, poster, and web site.

Orientation
- State of the World
- Millenium Development Goals
- Design Science

Orientation will be held at the United Nations where Medard Gabel, co-founder of the World Game Institute, colleague of Buckminster Fuller and president of BigPictureSmallWorld, Inc., will present a brief and interactive overview of the state of the world, its problems and options. Following this, UN personnel will present information about the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. Included in these presentations will be the background and context for the Millennium Development Goals, the goals themselves, how they are measured, how progress towards them is being measured, progress to date, strategies being used to reach the goals, and hurdles to be overcome before implementation.
After the state of the world and Millennium Development Goals presentation there will be an interactive presentation of design science, its methods, and how we will use its tools in the coming week to develop strategies for achieving one of the MDGs.

Lab
- Teams
- Preferred State
- Options
- Strategy development
- UN Presentation

The Lab portion of the program will be held at the U.N. International School at it’s Manhattan campus.
All participants will be a member of a team that will work on developing various strategies for cutting in half the number of people in the world suffering from hunger and malnourishment. There will be a large team, composed of all members of the Lab, and two to six smaller teams working on components of the overall hunger-reducing strategy.
Early lab work will define the goals and the preferred state of the strategy, the current state of world hunger, barriers and limits, technology, organizational, financial, and human resources, options and other variables that will be part of the MDG strategies. The synthesis of this information into viable, cost-effective, sustainable strategies for cutting in half the number of people impacted by hunger and malnourishment in the world will then be the task. This work will culminate in a presentation of the strategy to UN personnel and its documentation via a written report and web site.

Medard Gabel will facilitate all Design Science Lab sessions.
Program Partners