At our Design Open Mic on January 18, 2012, Producer Lee Schneider visited Architecture for Humanity to talk about his feature documentary, Shelter, which highlights innovative humanitarian shelter design around the world. Lee was joined by staff member Caroline Markowitz, and together the two showed clips from their filming in Haiti, described production plans for 2012, and introduced Shelter: connect, the educational initiative of the film, which connects university design students in the U.S. with communities in need.
Lee discussed why Shelter has decided to open source the film and gather public feedback. Lee said they started the outreach initiative to spark the humanitarian-design movement in schools, find out what schools are already working on projects like this and help them make media.
The Shelter: connect initiative is spearheaded by Caroline Markowitz and she explained that their main focus right now is finding schools to host workshops. They offer two distinct workshops - digital story-telling to help design and architecture students tell their story online, and a design-for-good workshop that is focused on helping schools already involved in a design-for-good project or want to start one.
Lee concluded that the major goal of Shelter: connect is to hook up with people who are inspired by humanitarian-design and know that even though it's hard, is ultimately worth-while.
