UNICEF MSA Visioning Workshop, 2014
The Extrapolation Factory conducted an experimental visioning workshop with a group of UNICEF employees who make up the Multilateral Systems Analysis in Governance and Multilateral Affairs group. Over the course of the workshop, we facilitated a visioning process around their group's goals for the future. We worked in groups with the UNICEF employees to focus several of these more abstract goals as specific dreams that international children might have. Each group depicted their child's dream as a diorama, accompanied by a short narrative, as can be seen below.
Sade is from a place in the middle of conflict and chaos. Her dream is to have an engine that can transport her to a better place; not just to live but to imagine new possible futures. The engine brings her to the moon, where everything is peaceful and interesting animals are reassuring. There, she meets a boy, who has also escaped from his own country in conflict. They come together to experience peace and take that as a first step to envisioning how they can bring that peace back to their cities and villages.
Malaya lost her home after the Hayan typhoon hit the Philippines. Her dream is to have a 3D printer that can turn what we consider as trash into new things. With it, she prints food for her family and her community so that they can eat all together. She also prints a disk of knowledge and uploads it into her head so that she doesn’t have to go to a conventional school anymore. Now she can become anything she wants to be.
Abdi was born in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. He never knew his home, but he knew the desert and had dreams of a home. He went to school, and he learned about oceans, jungles, and many other things. In his dream, he is visited by an army of squids at night, and he tells them to summon the shark to come and chase away the evil doers so that he can go home. The squids bring their ocean friends with them, and one of them takes Abdi back home. The shark chases the evil doers to the desert, where the scorpion is waiting. Abdi's home is surrounded by trees, birds, and animals, but very modern. He has a permanent home and school and a car.
Frida lives in a rural community in Pakistan, where child marriage is still a common practice. Young girls are married off to wealthy elder men. Her dream is to have an angel who would whisper to her parents and change their minds about her upcoming marriage so that she can go to school, and eventually get married to a person of her choice at the right time.See more documentation on flickr.