FOR GOOD… – a documentary project

A year ago, the UN adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals to address poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation. We have seen the difficulty of achieving effective climate change action, leading many people to become disillusioned with prospects for the future. Little-known to the public is the Social Impact Design movement, a burgeoning, dynamic group of innovators who are confronting global problems and are achieving remarkable – and measurable – results. d.light solar lamp

For Good... will, through film and internet components, bring the remarkable stories of this movement to the public. Throughout the film and continuing online we will follow teams of human-centered designers from inspiration through innovation and reiteration to eventual success. Interspersed with these stories will be profiles of innovators who seek – and find – awe-inspiring solutions, as well as people with whom they have partnered and whose lives have been changed. With a vibrant internet presence and extensive outreach initiative, For Good... will be a showcase for more of these ongoing stories and a stimulus for discussion and action.

Michael Murphy's experiences living in South Africa during apartheid and helping his dying father renovate an old house led him to think about the powerful influences of the built environment. This led him to start the nonprofit architecture firm, MASS Design. “I realized that structures directly affect our health and our lives, and that design is never neutral – it either helps or it hurts.” In his projects in Rwanda, Haiti, the US, and other countries, the process of building, by being an engine for local economic growth, is as important as the remarkable architectural solutions he and his colleagues find to combat disease transmission and to improve community interaction.

Linked with Michael's story is that of Anne-Marie Nyiranshimiyimana, a Rwandan woman who became a master mason while helping build MASS Design's Butaro Hospital. “They told me no woman builds. They told me women can't do a lot of things. But I will stay a mason. It dignified me.” This link between devising projects and developing local skills and knowledge is the essence of social impact design.

This is a detective story – except that instead of investigators seeking clues to solve crimes, this is about focused, compassionate designers struggling to discover, through collaborative models, answers to human problems around the world. These remarkable designers focus on the problem, imagine themselves in the shoes of their clients, and leverage the strengths of their communities to achieve long lasting social change. They recognize that perseverance through missteps and failures is necessary to achieve results, and their successes can inspire and empower a generation of young people to make the world better.

Martin Fisher was driven by frustration, in his case with the failures of governmental and NGO development efforts to sustainably improve the lives of those they intended to help. He realized that, just like anyone, the number one need of the poor is to have a way to make more money, and so he devised affordable and durable foot pumps that have helped hundreds of thousands

of farmers move from subsistence to commercial agriculture.

Empowered by Martin's Kickstart MoneyMaker pump, Patrick Bett, of Kenya has been able to more than double his family's net farm income, as well as to employ 20 people from his community. With the ability to irrigate, he is able to grow and sell over 170,000 tree seedlings to replenish the region's forests that had been devastated.

Doniece Sandoval overheard a homeless woman in San Francisco repeat over and over that she'd never get clean. With just sixteen public shower stalls for the 3500 people living on the city's streets, “It made me wonder what her chances were. I asked myself, if you can put gourmet food on wheels and take it anywhere, why not have mobile showers

and toilets?” She outfitted donated buses with sanitary facilities, and her organization, Lava Mae, now brings dignity and hope to the urban neglected.

Chris Charles, as a Public Health student living in Cambodia, saw that there was a huge problem that no one was addressing: anemia. The typical local diet contained few iron-rich foods, and his first idea was that people needed to drop blocks of iron into their cooking pots. The locals, though, regarded the idea as crazy. Studying village folklore, he learned that the fish shape is a symbol of health and luck in

Cambodia. This led to the Lucky Iron Fish, an attractive fish-shaped lump of iron that people enthusiastically utilize. And so began a growing effort to help the 3.5 billion people who suffer iron deficiency.

For Good... will bring the stories of these pioneers, their journeys, their failures, and their achievements to the greater public around the world. Many of those in the “millennial” generation are seeking paths to work with purpose and meaning. Through examples of fresh thinking and applied empathy, the For Good... project will help point to these paths.

Examples of other stories For Good... will cover:

Millions of premature and low-birth-weight babies born in the developing world need special care and expensive equipment. A group of Stanford University students took on the challenge and developed Embrace, an infant warmer with no moving parts that can do the work of a traditional incubator costing 200 times as much.

Seventy countries are plagued with more than 110 million active landmines. Massoud Hassani, a former Afghan refugee was inspired by wind-blown toys he made as a child and designed Mine Kafon. Made from bamboo and biodegradable plastic, it operates like tumbleweed in the wind to detonate mines safely – and costs a fraction of traditional mine deactivation.

Thousands of abandoned buildings in American urban neighborhoods seem to have no use. Biocellar replaces dangerous eyesores with passive greenhouses that produce local vegetables while reinvigorating the neighborhoods. Designed by Jean Loria and Terry Schwartz, the project is led by formerly incarcerated Manfield Frazier, employing a team of other formerly incarcerated builders.

Low income women all over the world have to wash their clothes in a local river or lake, pounding their clothing on rocks. Inspired by the Safe Agua initiative at Art Center College of Design, Alex Cabuoc and Ji A You developed GiraDora, a $40 foot-powered washer/dryer that alleviates strenuous effort, saves time, and frees hands while doing laundry.

For more information, please contact jonfein2@gmail.com or roger@turnstoneprod.com

For Good... Board of Advisors

Mariana Amatullo, Vice President, Designmatters, Art Center College of Design

Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Architecture & Design, The Museum of Modern Art

John Cary, Strategist & Curator, TED

Eric Cesal, former Executive Director, Architecture for Humanity

Lee Davis, Scholar in Residence, Center for Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art

Krista Donaldson, CEO, D-Rev

Robert Fabricant, Co-Founder and Principal, Design Impact Group

Martin Fisher, Co-Founder and CEO, KickStart International

Patrice Martin, Co-Lead + Creative Director, IDEO.org

Debera Johnson, Executive Director, Pratt Institute Center for Sustainable Design Studies

Tim Prestero, CEO, Design that Matters

Cynthia Smith, Curator, Socially Responsible Design, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Kevin Starr, Managing Director, The Mulago Foundation

Production Team

JONATHAN FEIN – Producer/Director

Jonathan Fein has long been motivated to help people see and appreciate what is right in front of them. His award-winning documentary Objects and Memory, a meditation on the otherwise ordinary things in our homes and museums that mean the most to us, was PBS’s national, prime time special in commemoration of the seventh and tenth anniversaries of 9/11. As a producer and/or editor, his work has included documentaries on a variety of subjects, from Journeys to Peace and Understanding, about President Nixon’s trip to China; The Competition, about maestro Lorin Maazel’s international search for great young conductors; Death Row Diaries, about Sing Sing prisoners; A Change of Heart, about volunteerism; as well as the PBS series The Fred Friendly Seminars; the Wisdom Channel series Innerviews; and the WNBC documentary magazine series 4Stories. He is the founding director of EVER – Environmental Video, Education, and Reports, an organization dedicated to using media to improve the world.

ROGER GRANGE- Producer/Cinematographer

Roger Grange has traveled the globe as a cinematographer and documentarian for over twenty-five years. His work is guided by a strong journalistic creed to reveal truth without manipulation. He has filmed hundreds of documentaries about subjects including deep ocean volcanism, education, terrorism, healthcare, and the failings of our democracy. His work has taken him to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in the submarine Alvin, into the ancient tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, and to the streets of Havana and Tehran. In 1994, Roger received an Earthwatch Film Award for a PBS documentary he co-directed in Kerala, India for the Quiet Revolution series, about innovative development programs in underprivileged communities. In January 2009, Roger released MEGAMALL, a documentary about corruption during the development of a major shopping mall. The film has been praised for revealing injustices in our political process, and has served educators and activists in their work. He was director of photography for Barbra Streisand's platinum live performance DVD One Night Only. Roger's documentaries have appeared on PBS, Discovery, TLC, Court TV, ABC News, The History Channel, the Food Network, BBC, and many others.