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WHAT IS ENZA?
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We believe in the abilities and potential of women in today’s world.
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I REPEAT: WHAT IS ENZA?
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Stemming from nearly 9 months development within Notre Dame's Design Department,
Enza might best be described as the collaborative brainchild of a bunch of students,
professors, and locals from South Africa.
I personally think 'force for doing good' sounds better, but maybe that's just me.
Design for Social Good
Last fall, as a member of Professor Robert Sedlack's Design for Social Good course, I worked alongside 12 other students to develop and design materials to be used for HIV/AIDS awareness and education in Jeppestown, South Africa. While my group initially focused on girls' empowerment through sport, the class switched the focus to the problem of medication management for the women diagnosed as HIV-positive.
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Developing Enza
Throughout the spring of 2015, three classmates and I worked to develop what is now Enza. Our research manifested itself as a pill wallet designed to hold Anti-Retroviral drugs for women living with HIV/AIDS. Over Spring Break 2014, my classmates and I (along with wallet prototypes sewn by one super-talented classmate) made our way to Jeppestown to test out the product in the context of South Africa.
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Summer in the City
Over the summer, three of the four members of my class chose to stay in Jeppestown and further develop Enza into what we know today--a crafting initiative designed to invite women into a setting where they are given the freedom to pursue their own potential. SAPPI, an international paper company, certainly thought Enza was an idea worth continuing (and they gave us $40,000 to boot!).
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Graphic design, at its core,
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Does Enza matter, though?
Through the development and practice of organizations like KNF and Enza, the women of South Africa can foster their capabilities which, in the most backwards of mentalities, usually can only come from first having a steady income with which to do so. Enza focuses on providing a basic level of skill with which women are more able to pull themselves and their families out of the poverty that encapsulates Jeppestown. Instead of ignoring the hundreds—thousands, millions—of persons who are deprived of the ability to participate in the dignity of work, Enza reasserts the value of the individual person. This is the essence of Ubuntu.
KNF and Enza answer the call that too many people in today’s world shy away from—how can each person look out for each person? How, when too many people in this world fail to see the dignity of each person, can we, as Octavio Paz urges us, not forsake our beliefs and values as our societies “leap toward the future?” How can we focus on measuring the worth of our actions not by “a Western yardstick,” but by the depth of their meaning in a more global context?
As I continue to assist and provide work for KNF and Enza, I hope to speak to the truth that Alexander Solzhenitsyn spoke of: each of us here on earth are called to “[fulfill] a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth…to leave life a better human being than one started it.” I believe that in these programs the women of Jeppestown can create for themselves, as agents of their own destinies, a brighter future through these programs and fulfill their own call to, as Solzhenitsyn speaks of, their innate human purpose.
So, to answer the question above, I think Enza matters quite a bit. Don't you?
KNF and Enza answer the call that too many people in today’s world shy away from—how can each person look out for each person? How, when too many people in this world fail to see the dignity of each person, can we, as Octavio Paz urges us, not forsake our beliefs and values as our societies “leap toward the future?” How can we focus on measuring the worth of our actions not by “a Western yardstick,” but by the depth of their meaning in a more global context?
As I continue to assist and provide work for KNF and Enza, I hope to speak to the truth that Alexander Solzhenitsyn spoke of: each of us here on earth are called to “[fulfill] a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth…to leave life a better human being than one started it.” I believe that in these programs the women of Jeppestown can create for themselves, as agents of their own destinies, a brighter future through these programs and fulfill their own call to, as Solzhenitsyn speaks of, their innate human purpose.
So, to answer the question above, I think Enza matters quite a bit. Don't you?
Journal: June 22 / Day 18
I believe in the work that we are doing, and I believe in its potential. Are we the most qualified people to make this work a reality? The more I think about it, as a whole, I think the answer has to be yes. Because we're here, and so passionate about these causes on a personal level. I know that there are people in this world (in this city, even) who are individually more talented at design, or at research, or at event planning, social media, fundraising, entrepreneurial development.
Yet we are here. And as a group, we are filled with a call that tells us this right, this is strong, this can happen.
And we won't stop. Because it is the work of God -- work of praising the dignity of each person, of supporting those ignored by society, of empowering those who feel rejected -- we can't stop. To walk humbly with God: this must remain the beautiful goal. And it will. At times we're bound to mess up, but all the mess-ups are kind of beautiful. Because no matter what, no matter how bad things ever get or how lost we may feel or how useless, we are always lifted up, always graced with another chance. We mess up, yes, but we were put in this world by one who never messes up in order to serve and love each person and to send hope to the hopeless. Enza is our call; this work is beautiful.
Yet we are here. And as a group, we are filled with a call that tells us this right, this is strong, this can happen.
And we won't stop. Because it is the work of God -- work of praising the dignity of each person, of supporting those ignored by society, of empowering those who feel rejected -- we can't stop. To walk humbly with God: this must remain the beautiful goal. And it will. At times we're bound to mess up, but all the mess-ups are kind of beautiful. Because no matter what, no matter how bad things ever get or how lost we may feel or how useless, we are always lifted up, always graced with another chance. We mess up, yes, but we were put in this world by one who never messes up in order to serve and love each person and to send hope to the hopeless. Enza is our call; this work is beautiful.