This afternoon, the Clinton Global Initiative kicked off the fifth Annual Meeting. For the first time, the CGI Annual Meeting is focused around a single theme - Designing for Impact. As Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, a global design firm, explained during his introduction of the theme, "Design at its essence is about being intentional. There isn’t a single thing in the manmade world that wasn’t designed…..The things that generally work well are things where thought was given on how that would be.”
The importance of proper design for development is clear. Last week, we featured a guest post on the Hunger and Undernutrition blog about the importance of design in development that provides more detail on how designers can contribute to development.
During the opening plenary, CGI gave an update on committments from the 2011 Annual Meeting and unveiled the first set of new commitments from this year, including a new initiative by the Special Olympics to improve healthcare for people with intellectual disabilities. The plenary also featured a discussion on the event's theme moderated by President Clinton with Walmart CEO Michael Duke, Queen Rania of Jordan, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and World Bank President Jim Kim.
This week, on both the HGD blog and Hunger & Undernutrition blog, we will delve deeper into how integrating design into development can help lead to better programs and initiatives. Stay tuned for more!
