The Participatory Development with Youth project aimed at endorsing human development and assisting in reducing youth unemployment by increasing the involvement and inclusion of young people in service development in South Africa and Namibia through the use of participatory and explorative service design tools. I have been working with social intervention among the indigenous San youth from 2015 to 2019. The goal of the project was to develop art-based methods that enable youth to express their opinions, challenges, and dreams. One of the actions involved using posters to address local social problems. Both the San youth in Upington and Kimberley participated in workshops where they created posters about these issues. Afterward, the posters were distributed within the community. These workshops also included storytelling workshops where the youth used community theater to develop and act out solutions to their challenges. The performances were shared through Vimeo (see below) and in the community school. The project created several artistic and scientific outcomes that you can find on the project page.

Read more from the book For Profit For Good. Miettinen, S. & Vuontisjärvi, H. Service design for participatory development. .2016  In P. Rytilahti & S. Miettinen (eds.) For Profit, for Good. Developing Organizations through Service Design. University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland.

Read more from the Cumulus Hong Kong Proceedings 2016. Miettinen, S., Vezzani, V., Shivuno-Kuria, S., Pierandrei, F., van Wyk, M. and Vuontisjärvi, H-R. 2016. Open design for development and youth.  Cumulus Conference Hong Kong Proceedings. Open Design for E-very-thing. 21.-24.11.2016. Hong Kong Design Institute

Read more from the Cumulus Paris Proceedings 2018. Miettinen, S.,Tang, T., Remotti, S, and Delfino, E. (2018) Service design tools for stakeholder dialogue and youth empowerment in Africa. Cumulus conference. To get there: designing together Paris – 11, 12, 13 April 2018.