Design Thinking for Humanitarian Aid and Global Development

This event is for enrolled students of the IDSC22 Winter 2026 course at University of Toronto Scarborough, instructed by Global Classroom Co-founder, Professor Bettina Von Lieres.

The course examines the history of humanitarian aid and focuses on selected contemporary debates on the future of humanitarian aid. It pays specific attention to the relationship between humanitarian aid and global development. Students engage critically with contemporary issues in and entanglements between international development and humanitarian aid. The course employs emergent approaches to collectively observe and uncover insights and intersections in these fields as part of a design-led discovery process for the majority of the semester. In the final weeks of the course, students bring discovery learning into generative practice by participating in a Global Classroom Design Jam, facilitated by the the Global Classroom for Democracy Innovation team.

During the Design Jam, students apply Design Thinking to learn more about new approaches to global justice and intercultural engagement through a humanitarian lens. Practically, students map and analyze real world case studies and pathways to action that are connected to their own lived experience. The Global Classroom team supports this work by professionally facilitating participatory processes and methods rooted in Design Justice. Questions around the widespread undermining and erosion of democracy, and (inter)national responses to increasing humanitarian crises, will be at the center of student engagements, allowing them to think from particular localities while also working across local/national/planetary scales.