Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) is a non-profit design and community development practice that partners with people living in extreme poverty to help them physically transform their communities, and in the process, improve their quality of life.

At KDI, we know poverty is complex—it is economic, social, and physical. In order to address the interconnected challenges of poverty, we build low-

cost, high-impact projects that holistically meet a community’s expressed needs. Often we build what we call Productive Public Spaces (PPS)—formerly underutilized spaces, such as vacant lots or dumping sites, transformed into active, attractive community hubs—that simultaneously improve people, place, and environment. Productive Public Spaces provide shared amenities (like water, sanitation facilities, and playgrounds), offer social programs (like skills training courses and recreational activities), and provide economic opportunity (through micro-loans and small businesses housed within the project).

Each project starts with the vision that residents have for their community. To realize this vision, we work collaboratively with residents from project conception through implementation to build on local ideas, enhance them with technical knowledge and design innovation, and connect them to existing resources. Through this community-driven process, KDI empowers residents to physically transform their environment, grow economic resilience, and build social cohesion. This active, iterative community process ensures that the end goal is accepted, owned, and sustained by the community that is ultimately responsible for its success.

KDI is currently working on 13 projects with communities in Africa, Latin America, and the United States. We strategically select and design our small-scale projects to create both physical and human networks that, when taken together, can start to address larger, regional challenges, like water pollution, unemployment, and social exclusion.

KDI has been recognized for our innovative approach to poverty alleviation by notable institutions such as The Rockefeller Foundation, The California Endowment, Ashoka Changemakers, American Express, Annenberg Alchemy, Smithsonian Institute, and Echoing Green.

Since 2006, KDI has worked in Kibera—the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya— to transform the polluted waterway that weaves through the settlement, into a lively spine of community amenities and social life.

In Kibera over half-a-million residents live in a space equal to just two-thirds the size of New York City’s Central Park. There is no formal waste management system, safe, affordable water is scarce and there is only one decent toilet per 250 residents. Open space is rare, and where it does exist it is typically used for dumping and criminal activity and seasonally flooded, making it a hazard for those living nearby.

Two KDI initiatives work together to improve the slum and quality of life for residents:

1) The Kibera Public Space Project is a network of active, and attractive community hubs that we call Productive Public Spaces. Each Productive Public Space is a waste space identified and transformed in partnership with a Community Group. A typical Productive Public Space may start as a hazardous neighborhood dumping site but, through a year-long, intensely-collaborative process, the site becomes a welcoming public space that provides basic amenities like clean water, toilets, schools, and playgrounds; offers income-generating assets like community gardens, and small-business kiosks; and delivers educational and social development opportunities including financial and technology training, leadership learning, primary education, and a multitude of recreational opportunities. The small businesses on site and the management training provided, ensure that the Productive Public Space is financially and operationally self-sufficient by year two. The Spaces physically, economically, and socially connects six (and counting) villages and have improved the lives of approximately 60,000 people.

2) WATSAN Portal: Kibera is an innovative, online mapping and decision-making tool that enables community groups, non-governmental organizations, and government agencies to rapidly and efficiently launch high-quality water and sanitation projects in Kibera.

In 2012, the online platform was recognized by The Rockefeller Foundation as one of 8 winners of the Centennial Innovation Challenge, which drew 2,000 entries from around the world. KDI’s proposal responds to a challenge to “translate vast amounts of available information into meaningful data that ultimately makes a difference in the lives of the poor or vulnerable residing in urban areas.” It is currently being piloted in two villages in Kibera. It can be accessed at watsanportal.co.ke.

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This year, KDI began developing a holistic Rural Development Plan for the Longborizu village - a remote village in the extremely poor Upper West region of Ghana. The Plan will provide opportunities for investments in agriculture, health, education, environment, and infrastructure for the village and the surrounding area. The plan provides basic information, assesses needs, and identifies strategic interventions, timelines, and milestones for each of the sectors within the next several years. Local indigenous knowledge is paired with regional expertise to ensure a grounded, innovative, and realistic plan. As part of phase one, we will launch three pilot initiatives that catalyze larger-scale projects and demonstrate some of the principles elaborated in the report. The plan will serve as a call-to-action for other potential investors and provide a basis for tracking progress in the village. KDI has established a full-time presence in the village for the duration of the project.

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Community workshops were fist held in October, 2013.

In 2012, KDI joined the Coalition for an Active South Los Angeles (CASLA) to better understand the social, physical, and economic history and challenges in its own back yard of South Los Angeles. We spent a year getting to know the non-profits, community groups, and residents working to improve quality of life in the area, while determining whether KDI could add value to those efforts. Recognizing a void in service provision that KDI could uniquely fill, we teamed up with a number of CASLA members, including TRUST South LA, Community Health Council, Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, LURN, Advancement Project, and Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, to create an initiative called Free Lots Angeles. South Los Angeles has long been known as a place of historical disinvestment; earmarked by its reputation for gang issues, police brutality, and drug abuse. However, we see South Los Angeles as a rich center of culture and community—a part of the city with vast untapped potential. Free Lots Angeles collaborates with residents to build on the latent opportunities in South Los Angeles by activating the numerous vacant lots in the area in order to meet resident’s needs. Through a series of community designed “pop-up” events, Free Lots Angeles creates a political and community conversation around transforming formerly dangerous spaces into thriving public places. Our first “activation” event took place in January. We aim to create four additional temporary parks in 2014.

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Free Lots Angeles first “pop-event”: January 2014 in Watts, CA

We have always believed that the participatory project process KDI developed in Kenya, is relevant and replicable globally. In 2011, we had the opportunity to test this belief in the United States, in the Eastern Coachella Valley of California. Though the Eastern Coachella Valley is one of the most fertile agricultural growing regions of California and has a rich history as Native American homeland, it shares many similarities with some of the poorest communities in the world. The seasonal farm workers that reside in the Valley put food on the tables of families across the nation, yet the daily challenges they face are virtually unseen by the outside world. The approximately 88,000 people that live in this unincorporated stretch of desert lack access to basic health services, transportation, and higher education, and endure substandard living conditions—often in dilapidated trailer parks— where water is contaminated with arsenic and they are exposed to unregulated, hazardous waste dumps. In 2011, KDI partnered with the residents of the St. Anthony Trailer Park to design a space to address these challenges. Replicating the project process developed in Kenya, we worked with residents to design and build the first of a network of Productive Public Spaces. St. Anthony now has access to a playground, a shaded family pavilion, a community meeting and event space, and a community garden. We are currently developing a second, 5-acre Productive Public Space in the Valley, in the community of North Shore. This larger project will house a soccer field, skate plaza, adult fitness circuit, small-business vending kiosks, and a bike share/repair program. The physical project will be supported by robust arts programming and entrepreneurship training for women. It is our hope that these projects are the beginning of a network of revitalization efforts in the Eastern Coachella Valley. With ECV communities’ strong activist spirit and a roster of seasoned community empowerment organizations championing them, we are confident that lasting change in this underserved part of the state, is possible.

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AWARDSVan Alen Institute New York Prize for Public Architecture | WinnerAECOM Urban SOS: Frontiers | KDI Interns, Competition WinnerUrbaninform Architecture of Social Investment Competition | WinnerThe Rockefeller Foundation Centennial Innovation Challenge | WinnerInternational ReSource Award for Sustainable Watershed Management | WinnerAshoka Changemakers Sustainable Urban Housing Competition | 1 of 5 AwardedLiving Labs Global Competition | FinalistArchitecture of Necessity | Honorable MentionEchoing Green | Semi-finalistArtPlace America | Finalist | (competition still in progress)

S E L E C T E D R E C O G N I T I O N

ACColades | Kounkuey Design InitiativeEnabling City | named 1 of 80 Innovative Global Initiatives for Urban sustainabilityNext City’s Disruption Index | Named 1 of 77 People and Ideas That Changed Cities in 2012

ACColades | CHELINA ODBERTAmerican Express + Ashoka | 1 of 15 Global Emerging Social Innovators Public Interest Design Global 100 | Named 1 of 100 Designers + Advocates Shaping the WorldAspen Institute | Ideas Scholar

EXHIBITIONSAfritecture | Pinakothek Museum of Modern Art | GermanyArchitecture of Necessity Exhibition | Virserums Art Museum | Sweden Design with the Other 90% | Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Museum + United Nations | USAThink Global, Build Social! Architectures For a Better World | Architekturmuseum | GermanySmall Architecture BIG Landscapes | Swope Art Museum | USASquatter City | Rotterdam Biennale | Netherlands

FUNDERSRockefeller FoundationCalifornia EndowmentSurdna FoundationClif Family Foundation Swiss Reinsurance CompanyMalkenson FoundationDove Givings FoundationNoah Foundation

pUBLICATIONSNow Urbanism | Published by Routhedge Press | ChapterForbes Magazine | Megacities: Opportunities at Urban Edges | 4 articles

PRESSModerators of Change | Book | Published by Hatje CantzHarvard Design Magazine | Contemporary Practice, Kounkuey Design InitiativeTopos Magazine | Urban Agriculture Casablanca, Design as an Integrative Factor of ResearchMetropolis Magazine | Greening the Ivory Tower

aDVIsoR EXPERIENCEUN Expert Group Meeting on Public Space for Urban Development | InviteeIDEO Amplify | Working Group for Design and Innovation Challenges | InviteeUrban Agricuture as a Factor of Climate-Optimized Urban Development Casablanca, Morocco | 1 of 4 Global Design Firms invited to develop a strategy for local government

If you would like more information about our organization or are interested in participating in an innovative, collaborative

change effort with communities near or far, please contact us:

Co-Founder + Executive DirectorChelina Odbert

108 west 2nd Street | Suite 809Los Angeles, CA 90012

213.985.1222chelina@kounkuey.org

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