MIT D-Lab

In January, a group of students from the D-Lab: Gender and Development class traveled to Kenya to work with a group of teen mothers to facilitate a Creative Capacity Building for Business (CCB-B) workshop at longstanding D-Lab community partner organization, the Society Empowerment Project. As they left, they wrote, "we felt a deep sense of gratitude. We had been welcomed into a community and had the chance to contribute to something meaningful, viable, and rooted in reality. Just as important, we left with relationships that will last well beyond the workshop. What we built together in Homa Bay was not just a set of businesses. It was confidence, dignity, and belief in what is possible."

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Building confidence before businesses: MIT D-Lab students and Kenyan teen mothers empower a community D-Lab: Gender and Development students and workshop participants. Photo: Courtesy MIT D-Lab Blog | Feb 06, 2026 | Cassidy Jennings, Shikha Pandey, Samantha Simmons, Elena Tori, Kai Wong, Sophia Yoon MIT D-Lab When we arrived near Homa Bay, Oyugis, Kenya in January 2026 to facilitate a Creative Capac...

Our friends at the French Red Cross Foundation and the Kenya Red Cross Society are launching their first Humanitarian Design Challenge, dedicated to circular innovation and dignity in humanitarian contexts! Applications are open until February 28, 2026. bit.ly/497msRG

The challenge: to rethink the structures and walls of pit latrines used in the Kakuma refugee camp (the world’s second largest refugee camp, with around 300,000 people), which are currently often built with corrugated metal sheets that are costly and not very durable.

The objective is to design accessible, sustainable, replicable solutions that improve living conditions and reduce waste.

New publication with five MIT D-Lab-affiliated authors, including Faculty Academics Director Maria Yang, Executive Director Ana Pantelic, and former staff members/instructors Eric Reynolds Brubaker, Bryan Ranger, and Amy Banzaert! Extreme Design: An Editorial on a New Research Framework within Engineering Design: https://bit.ly/47I6StI

"As the scale and urgency of global challenges grow, such as climate change, autonomous systems, and aging populations, so does the need for design approaches that go beyond conventional methods and models ... [Extreme Design] XD "offers a way to approach design problems that are dynamic, interdisciplinary, and fundamentally hard to frame but have humanity at their core... We aim to open a conversation—not to define XD fully, but to signal its necessity and invite the design research community to explore and shape it."

MIT School of Architecture + Planning MIT School of Engineering

Listen to MIT D-Lab alum Kwami Williams '12 discuss the journey of True Moringa on this CNN Inside Africa interview. Since meeting in a D-Lab class and founding their company while still undergraduates, Kwami and Co-Founder Emily Cunningham have worked to raise the incomes of 5,000 farmers in and planted 10 million Moringa trees, producing nutritious Moringa powder and teas, and Moringa oil to nourish the skin and hair!

MIT Alumni Association MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship

True Moringa | CNN Feature | Inside Africa Tour True Moringa's Regenerative Organic moringa farm and learn more about moringa: https://truemoringa.com/pages/ten-million-trees True Moringa makes regene...