Here I Am 2024: A new process and a new perspective

It’s amazing how quickly change happens.

It’s been 3 whirlwind years since we launched Here I Am and defined our way of doing things. From the offset we knew that what we did, how we did it and who we did it for would always be underpinned by our deep commitment to ethics and inclusivity - and gladly that has not changed.

Including the excluded continues to be the Here I Am mission that drives what we do.

However, in that time, we have grown up. Our work has grown up and the way we do things has too.

We have learnt from excluded people, about how they’d like to be engaged, from our partners, on how they’d like to be supported, and from the sector, on how we might play our part in truly driving change.

So from 3 years worth of retrospectives, we’ve built those learnings into a refined process and perspective that will guide us through the next 3 years.

What we do: Our Process

We help social impact organisations to design, develop, and scale new ways to include the excluded. We conduct deep design research, deliver capacity building bootcamps, launch and grow brand new digital products and services and guide partners through their entire digital transformation. Everything we do is grounded in ethics, delivered with agility, and driven by impact.

Discover	Design	Develop	Grow
Strategy	Concept	Build	Measure
Research	Design	Train	Insight
Synthesis	Prototype	Pilot	Iterate
Insight	Test	Launch	Scale

How we do it: Our Perspective

We approach everything we do from three core perspectives; Human, Systems and Creative. Looking at challenges through these three lenses we have confidence that what we create will be useful, respectful, safe and long lasting within the context of its use.

The Human Lens

Through our human centred, equity driven approach, we understand, co-create and validate with our target audience, with respectful engagements, designed in partnership with them. We consider the way in which we engage people throughout the project as much as we consider what we’re hoping to learn with them. Working closely with the most marginalised communities, we learn from those with lived experience about the barriers they face to accessing standard services. We take time to deeply understand their experience and context and in partnership we design solutions that work for them.

The Systems Lens

Our products and services are designed to be adoptable and sustainable in the systems that surround them, whether that is embedding into existing systems or adapting and designing new ones to support them. We never consider our digital products in isolation of the wider ecosystem that they will inhabit and we always plan for the impact that their presence in a community might have, both now and in the future.

The Creative Lens

The humanitarian sector is crying out for more creativity and we’re stepping up to deliver it. We start with creative problem solving, challenging our partners to think differently about their brief, questioning, experimenting and innovating with different approaches and technologies. Then we weave creativity throughout our solutions, crafting frictionless experiences that are meticulously designed to be as enjoyable as they are impactful. We believe that creativity is core to the success of any digital product or service, whoever's hands it finds itself in.

Who we do it for: Excluded People

We design products and services for and with excluded people so that they can safely progress their lives and the lives of those around them.

We design for people living in displaced communities, sharing phones to access education services.

We design for adolescent Kenyan girls, in need of anonymous digital support to navigate their sexual reproductive health.

We design for refugee led organisations whose low digital literacy is limiting their opportunities to drive change in their communities.

We design for young activists in Latin America, seeking a platform to grow funds and build their movement, safe from persecution.

And we do so with meticulous attention to detail, unwavering dedication to understanding and a pure passion for change.