Freedom through independence
,2021
We live in a society where not everyone has the same opportunities. While some people are allowed to live, others must survive.
The work of Joël Djakou deals with the increasing trend of inequality and develops a web-based tool for participation. He focuses on the media factor and approaches the problem from a non-profit, social perspective. His proposal consists of a job platform that wants to enable equal opportunities and combines the awarding of contracts with the support of social projects.
Interventions such as the 2030 Agenda, with its Sustainable Development Goals, call for change in society. This change should happen consciously through design before we can no longer prevent the change through a disaster.
In this, the human being as a designer plays a central role and is called upon to question the consequences of his actions more clearly and to adopt a self-critical attitude.
«What we need is an approach to innovation that is powerful, effective and widely accessible, that can be integrated into all aspects of business and society, and that individuals and teams can use to generate breakthrough ideas that are implemented and thus have an impact.» (Brown & Katz, 2019)
The digital modern age holds both enormous potential and incalculable risks. The great challenge is to use the digital revolution in the sense of sustainably securing a dignified life for all living beings on our planet.
While the society of the industrialised nations must substantially modify its ecological footprint, for the emerging countries of the second and third world it means questioning the established concepts of growth and prosperity and developing alternatives. (Banz, 2016)
The following work deals with this topic and focuses on the relationship between media, design, attention and social engagement in relation to the upcoming transformation, in order to pursue the goal of freedom through independence in the digital age in a subsequent step.
Theory and empiricism show that volunteering makes people happy. Moreover, it is recognised that communication is the central element of voluntary work. It is all the more interesting to see how this area is changing through digitalisation and what new opportunities are being gained to be able to attract society's attention to important issues. At the same time, the approach to problem-solving is also changing, and so the designer is animated from doing to thinking.
By means of voluntary work, a solution is to be found how a fair distribution can take place so that the issue of poverty can be circumvented and equal opportunities made possible.
