The Good Guides is a a volunteer-based program to reduce the waiting time for patients in government hospitals in India over an year long project. This program is unique because it is an organized mobilization of young, motivated volunteers to improve the healthcare experience for an underserved population in India. The volunteers are trained to be mediators between the staff and the patients to communicate the right information and provide support to ensure smoother patient flow. They have launched an organized yet customizable platform of information and resources for hospital management, healthcare consultants or NGOs to be able to adopt this model for their own hospitals. From their learnings during the process of working on thesis, they have also designed a toolkit for change-makers across the world which has a library of all resources that they used in their work and a step-by-step methodology that can be followed to create positive change.
Pragya Mishra
Pragya Mishra graduated with a degree in graphic design from the National Institute of Design in Gujarat, India. While there, she focused on projects with social relevance, including her thesis project with an NGO called Doosra Dashak, in which she designed educational materials for rural adolescents living in harsh conditions in Rajasthan. During her time at NID, she also studied with an exchange program at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France. After graduating, she worked as an independent designer for two years, contributing to a range of projects, including the organization and design for Typography Day 2011, an international conference, and a publication project documenting the art and lives of street painters. Pragya joined the DSI program because she wants to empower people with the help of design.
Swar Raisinghani
Swar Raisinghani grew up in Gujarat and studied graphic design at the MIT Institute of Design, Pune. She took on internships, attended conferences like DesignYantra and Typography Day, and quickly found herself gravitating to projects that made a social impact. She values conversation and learning about social innovation from the diverse voices at DSI. In her spare time, Swar travels, watches movies, and works on her illustrations.
Now that she has graduated from DSI, Swar is currently based in Pune, India, where she works as a co-founder and design lead at Xeno Co-Lab. Her company specializes in creating meaningful, sustainable impact for people and businesses through collaboration to design unique products, services & experiences. They also provide lectures and workshops globally about designing for diversity and inclusion, and most recently featured at Internet Week Denmark 2019 in Aarhus. Some of Xeno Co-Lab’s notable projects can be found here.
