From the Classroom to the World (via Osocio)

Posters designed by students in my class Design Rebels in Richmond, Virginia, have been transformed as part of a gender sensitivity awareness program in the Philippines into a new campaign again prostitution thanks to a post on Osocio! Details follow…

Once a year I teach a course on socially conscious design at Virginia Commonwealth University called Design Rebels. As part of the class the students need to create a project using their design skills to reach beyond the school and have an impact on their community. In 2007 the class created a campaign they called Rise-Now, which was aimed at spreading awareness of the resources in the area available to survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. Posters were put up around town that had a pocket filled with brochures listing the resources as well as the URL for a site they had created with the same information online.

While the posters are long gone and the site they put up did not last beyond that year (and is now owned by someone else), the images they created have had a surprising rebirth halfway around the world! In February of this year I got a note from Belita Vega, a rural sociologist at Visayas State University in Baybay City, Philippines, who had seen the posters online and asked if she could repurpose them for an anti-prostitution campaign she was helping to launch. I was happy to oblige and sent her the raw files.

Just this past week she sent me these photos of the updated posters with their new copy in use. She says: “I need to be subtle in the messages because of the conservative culture of our people. For now we place them on campus then later on in the communities using our own language. . .  so far, we get positive feedbacks, hope it will translate into action.”