Container Kindergarten Project as a Social Responsibility Project

Abstract

“ACT FOR”, a social responsibility project unit is a sustainable solidarity platform that was established at the design faculty for the aim of creating collective act between designers and people in need. The main aim of this project is to enhance design students’ critical perspectives on how to prepare a social responsibility project for their local environment and work collaboratively with other disciplines. The design students are expected to understand the importance of social responsibility activities and its’ role for the universities and the community. They are also expected to learn how their attitudes translate into behaviour and action while they are questioning what just and unjust is in their local environment. This study reports on Container Kindergarten Project as a social responsibility project. Believing that the success of social responsibility projects should be in harmony with the needs of the community, “ACT FOR” designers firstly analysed the needs of their local environment. Later, we developed the project for a chosen primary school where 25 children were trained in a space that could not meet the ventilation, heating and spatial organization requirements and continued to provide education as an unhealthy living space for children. After the conceptual phase, we prepared the necessary drawings and found sponsorships for the implementation. With this project, the design students learned how to solve problems and make design management to finalize the project. They learned how to work as a team with different disciplines to ensure homogeneous distribution of tasks. At the end, the design students discovered the healing aspect of the design. With all difficulties and contributions, it taught the multi-dimensional education method that they never experienced before. As a result, the community-university relationship is one of the most important points in determining and meeting the needs of a community. Therefore, universities play a major role in raising awareness in this subject.