Professionalisation, participation and relationships

This paper looks at issues of ethics in humanitarian iunnovation in relation to the Mahali Lab in Amman, Jordan. This reflection piece by Kristin Bergtora Sandvik is the third in a three-part series that explore ethics questions faced by community-centred innovation labs. It is based on her experience as an ethics advisor to DEPP Innovation Labs, a two-year programme that manages labs in four disaster-prone countries. 

This  paper is based on participation in a learning workshop facilitated by the Mahali lab in Amman (Jordan) in October 2018. It is based on Kristin's field notes but also on 2017 and 2018 interim reports from the Mahali lab, pictures were taken during the work11`shop to capture written output, and DEPP Labs project documents.

Kristin considers some of the ethical questions that the lab was grappling with when reflecting on its previous two design sprints. This moment of reflection represented an important opportunity for the lab to ‘fix things’ and address ethics issues in its final innovation cycle, which began in late 2018. As before, all viewpoints are Kristins.

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