Design Emergency began as an Instagram Live series during the Covid-19 pandemic and is now becoming a wake-up call to the world, and compelling evidence of the power of design to effect radical and far-reaching change. Co-founders Paola Antonelli and A...
Roya Mahboob. Portrait: Brigitte Lacombe. Bespoke typography: Studio Frith.
Mahboob spoke to Alice Rawsthorn about the Afghan Dreamers’ ventilator design project and her belief in the importance of educating girls in design and technology. And, of course, their families were worried every time the girls left home, about security issues besides Covid-19. At the beginning, we had to fight to persuade them to allow the students to work on the project. We had to bring the girls to the office, but only had one car permit that allowed one car to go around the city. Another challenge was that we didn’t have the facilities to build some of the parts, so we had to go to a workshop 20 minutes outside the city.
But then, of course, you need to have the cooperation of the governor, you need to have the cooperation of the hospitals and doctors. And right now, the situation is that you can’t find doctors, because they are very busy with patients and they don’t have enough time to come and test the device. Of course, we appreciate their time and understanding, but the situation seems to be out of control.
However, we have assembled a team of engineers who support us and fortunately, two weeks ago our president, Ashraf Ghani, mentioned in a cabinet meeting that he wanted the minister of health to look at our device and to support us. That meant a lot for us. We are very happy about that, and with the first devices, we have built. They have some functionality, which is good, and now we are working on the second prototype.
But it is also a great opportunity for us to show, as responsible citizens, what we can do for our community. I’m really very proud of these girls. They are very young, the youngest is 14 years old and the oldest is 17 years old. But they had the courage to do this. They said: ‘This is what we can do. This is our ability. Now we have to help our doctors and our nurses, and we have to help our government and our community.’ That’s how they started.
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