How Nisarg Designed a Viable Non-Profit Product
Nisarg is a New Zealand-raised, German-based Project Engineer at INDEED who specializes in product development from concept design to production. He has created robust products for a wide array of industries, including medical, marine, military, and sporting industries. When Nisarg isn’t working he enjoys traveling to new cities, surfing, sports, and exploring mountains.
By Nisarg Acharya, d.MBA alum, with contributions by Clare Goldblatt
I work for INDEED, which is a unique innovation company that helps its clients develop sustainable business strategies and ecosystems, delivering humane products and services. One of the projects INDEED has taken on is with a non-profit organization called Skateistan, which is an inventive combination of a classroom and fold-up skatepark for kids serving underdeveloped communities around the world. The program combines creative, arts-based education with skateboarding, serving groups that are often left out of sports and education, including girls, children with disabilities, and working-class children. This safe space Skateistan allows children to break down social barriers, enhance their skills, gain confidence, and most importantly, have fun.
The main goal of Skateistan is to empower children all over the world. When you skateboard, you fall down and you have to get back up again, so this is a great life skill kids can really use. It gives kids a new way of thinking and additional confidence. Skateistan has thus far enhanced the lives of 2,500 children in South Africa, Cambodia, and Jordan, but sought our expertise in order to have an even broader impact and reach a larger community of children.
The main obstacle usually comes from building new infrastructure for the schools and skateparks, which requires time, resources, and funding. We decided to look into how to make a broader reach feasible using agile and cost-effective solutions.
Before I was able to build and engineer in my workshop, I had to determine the feasibility of a possible new strategy for Skateistan. I used the BMI framework, which I learned during the d.MBA, in order to identify what the main problem is that Skateistan faces.
The Who, and What were pretty simple to identify, as my job normally involves those two aspects in detail, but asking the questions about the How and Why really helped me connect the dots and steered my strategy in a new direction.
I identified the Why as a charity that works and is successful, gets trust and support, and consequently, funding. The How is where I identified that we need these initiatives to be driven by the communities they serve and to also make the solution as simple as possible to avoid bottlenecks in the logistics and supply chains.
We have to make sure the community is involved from the start and that the community ultimately owns it. That’s what creates success. It’s the difference between giving aid and ownership.
I identified in the How that organizing the shipment of required components to build the school and skatepark were in need of optimization. Every component should be sourced locally, as this ensures that the project is community-driven, avoids problems with logistics and customs, protects items from theft, and also leads to a reduced carbon footprint. I also recognized that in order for this project to be community-led, the design needed to be simple, could be built with basic equipment, and not need advanced machinery, whilst being robust enough to not be in need of constant maintenance. Finally, Skateistan currently faces the challenge that a lot of hands-on support is needed for the deployment of the parks, which is time-consuming and slows down the process completely. I identified that we need to optimize our remote assistance for the Skateistan schools, instead of always having to send someone to physically be there to help.
The BMI framework helped me come to my solution, called Skateistan in a Box. It’s an upcycled shipping container featuring a modular, flatpack design for maximum flexibility. It’s easy to construct, requires minimal shipments from Skateistan, and is completely sustainable and off-grid, using solar and wind power, a Tesla battery, and a compost toilet. There’s also a double green roof, which regulates heat, collects rainwater, and allows for the growth of self-sufficient agriculture. It creates not only a community but a circular economy as every aspect is sustainable and reusable. To tackle our challenge of on-site assistance, we also included a simple audio/visual unit to offer virtual assistance.
We created a pitch deck showcasing the new solution, Skateistan in a Box, which has allowed Skateistan to secure significantly more funding and the potential to reach thousands more children. This pitch deck is based on the insights I gained from the BMI framework and from an online workshop we did with the local communities to identify every single manufacturing and usage stage of Skateistan.
These insights allowed us to ideate on our solution, which is off-grid, sustainable, and a pillar of the local community, offering accessible education to children who might not otherwise have an opportunity to be educated.
It’s a positive snowball effect, where if you can get an education, you can get more opportunities in life, you can get more confidence, and your chances of success are just better as a whole.