Project Iridescent

November 1 2016

ˌ ɪ r ɪ ˈ d ɛ s ( ə ) n t /

Portfolio

https://projectiridescent.wordpress.com/

“Project iridescent hopes to create a ripple that will

inspire people to realize gender inequality and take action.”

Project Iridescent is an organization of 9 girls from 9 different countries fighting for gender equality.

Anh from Vietnam

Appy from India

Esther from Sierra Leone

Linlin from China

Malika from Tajikistan

Mashal from Pakistan

Maya from Singapore

Nora from Myanmar

Tiyi from France

From our different backgrounds, each member of Project Iridescent has our personal reasons to join this cause. Project Iridescent is very ambitious and will push all of us out of our comfort zone, putting us in situations where we inevitably gain a better understanding about ourselves. As it is not something we have done, we will continue to grow in many aspects.

Challenges

Communication: we are learning how to convince people that our project is worth putting effort into, right at this very first stage, and we will continue learning it throughout if the project is approved.
Managing expectations.
Maintaining focus.
Overcoming team biases.
Closing the vision gap
Undefined Goals – When goals are not clearly identified, the whole project and team can suffer.
Inadequate Skills for the Project – Some of our goals sometimes requires skills that we do not possess.
One of the major challenges we faced was traveling. We are a group of ten people including our advisor and it was difficult to move as a whole.

Our project aims to eradicate, or at least help realize an issue that is present everywhere on Earth, even in the most peaceful, non-violent countries.

What is Project Iridescent?

Gender inequality is found in varying degrees in most societies around the world, and Japan is no exception. Despite changes during this period, children are still socialized from birth into traditional notions of femininity and masculinity, and gender-based stereotyping incorporating these notions still continues. Although people should certainly be free to pursue whatever family and career responsibilities they desire, socialization and stereotyping still combine to limit the ability of girls and boys and women and men alike to imagine less traditional possibilities. Meanwhile, structural obstacles in the workplace and elsewhere continue to keep women in a subordinate social and economic status relative to men. Gender inequality is a form of inequality which is distinct from other forms of economic and social inequalities. Gender inequality has an adverse impact on developmental goals as it reduces the economic growth. It hampers the overall well-being because blocking both women and men from participating in certain social, political and economic activities can adversely affect the whole society.

Japan has one of the worst levels of gender equality in the developed world, below that of Tajikistan and Indonesia, coming in 104th out of 142 assessed countries in 2014, according to a study released by the World Economic Forum. Women today occupy a mere 9% of managerial positions in private-sector firms, even though they account for more than 40 percent of the employees. In 2013, 65% of women aged 15 to 64 were employed compared to 84.6% of men, according to the OECD. If female labor participation could be brought up to male levels, GDP could see a boost of 13%.

Therefore, we are working to create a gender equality workshop in Japan about gender relations through the use of various media. (mission statement)

Project Week

What is Project Week?

Project week is a time that we are given as students, to achieve a set of tasks and improve our community service (CAS) projects.

RISING FIELD

At Rising field we worked with the Animal Protection Project (APP) team in three different outdoor challenges.

Although our group had great team spirit, constantly working together, sharing ideas and even creating a team chant, our group didn’t receive a good score. The biggest challenge was listening to each other and deciding on an idea because we have 9 girls with very strong and unique personalities. Through our time at Rising field, we were able to practice our group work and we did an incredible job in terms of coming together. It was a great experience for our team that developed our time management skills.

SCAVENGER HUNT In the scavenger hunt, we had to look for information and complete challenges, as a group while finding our way back from Naka Karuizawa to our school. We divided into two groups taking two different routes. We were very successful in the scavenger hunt as we ended up 3rd overall.

Workshop - Mr Nakamoto (Economic Education)

Mr Nakamoto is a President & COO of Council for Economic Education Japan (CEE-Japan). He is also a founder and former COO of Junior Achievement. Mr Nakamoto gave us a presentation on corporate accounting. We had the great opportunity to present our project in front of Mr Nakamoto and receive feedback.

Rebuilding / refocusing or developing project as a team

Our team used the second half of Tuesday discussing our focus. Being a large group, many of our members had different visions and goals that they want to achieve. Sharing them and coming up with a solid goal was necessary for our group to move on. Overall our group was divided into people that want to work in developing countries outside Japan, and people who want to work in Japan. After this session, we came to a conclusion that Project Iridescent would work in Japan attacking the issue of gender inequality from four aspects: creative writing, visual media, audio media, and education. We would also work together to organize workshops about gender equality and if we see potential, we would expand our focus to other countries.

On Wednesday and Thursday, members of Project Iridescent would be visiting Plan International, an organization that is currently working on children and women’s rights in multiple countries. Aside from that, the media team was working on getting design contacts from the Tokyo Design Week exhibition site.

Project Identity and Presence

Thankfully, our group had previously decided our logo, which is also a huge part of our brand and presence as it is based on the meaning of our project name. We have our official website, email and Instagram account in order to help promote our project in different styles.

Our business card

( Front ) ( Back )

On the card, we included our project name, goal, image, and other contact information. We worked on this because we believe that it would be important for us to be professional when we contact people and organizations in the future. It is, simultaneously, a way for us to spread our project as it includes ways for institutions to contact us and find out more about our project. We are planning to add our website to the business cards in the future when we have developed our project more in that area.

Tokyo Design Week

Our first day in Tokyo. We started out the day with visiting Tokyo Design Week. We met with designers and art students in order to get contacts and advice on marketing, advertising and how to create and design our own products.

One of our biggest challenges today, applicable to our Tokyo trip, in general, was the language barrier. Our team only has three Japanese speakers and three working cell phones, so we were limited to dividing our team into two big groups. Within the groups, we were able to explore and experience different sections, such as the creative life, interactive, container, interactive architectural, professional creators and young creators exhibitions from various universities such as Tongmyong University Busan, Korea. Without Japanese, some of us were unable to understand the most fundamental ideas behind each of their projects. It was a significant loss, but in return, the non-Japanese speaking people were able to better observe how their presentation and marketing strategies. Obviously, they were doing something right, because we were fascinated with each and every one of the stalls.

http://tokyodesignweek.jp/2016/tokyo/en_index.html

In going to the Tokyo Design Week, we were hoping to get inspiration for our media teams, and also collect contacts of potential partners. We were able to discover a university in Korea which opens digital workshops for women. Another stall designs “zines”, similar to what we are planning to do, so we had the chance to see what could be considered professional zines. The trip was as fun as it was inspiring for us as a team. To see people everywhere working together to create innovative products help us see our project in terms of a “team” rather than different people working on separate things within a group called “Iridescent”

Because I am a Girl

https://plan-international.org/because-i-am-a-girl

In the afternoon, we visited an organization called Plan International for a presentation/interview on their project (Because I am a Girl). We learned about their approach and solution to various issues regarding gender and women’s rights. The presentation that they gave was originally meant for potential donors, therefore, we also learned a new way to present our project. It was very helpful in regards to gaining information and advice on project development and taking action.

The project, “Because I am a girl” had a unique approach to the issue of gender inequality. The project actually met with the people living in the community and held meetings, allowing them to realize the issue themselves and having them contribute to solving it. Being merely a group of girls working for gender equality, we do not have enough power to take major actions. Therefore meeting “Because I am a girl” gave us a new approach to our issue. We were able to understand how when we empower girls, everyone wins. They also talked about girls in developing countries unable to go to school due to sanitary reasons. Many girls from those families do not have enough sanitary products for themselves, often dirtying their uniforms at school and being laughed at by boys. Such embarrassment discourages the girls from going to school. In response to this issue the project created sanitary kits for the girls.

They were also able to assist us by responding to our questions. We were able to find out that:

Needs assessment was most effective through talking to people facing the problem
When making connections with such people, maintaining long-term commitment/connections are very important
We will not be able to solve every single problem, and therefore it is important to prioritize the issues that are more urgent or important
They measure accomplishments of people’s awareness by seeing how their beliefs about the issues have changed
It is important, and effective, to make people realize this problem
Educating them is important, but it will only sink in if they become aware that what is going on around them is problematic
Connecting with other organizations will help us a lot, as well

Overall, the presentation by “Because I am a girl” has allowed our group to look at the issue in a different way and explore other possible ideas of tackling this issue. It helped us solidify our approaches and how to help people become aware of the problems of gender inequality.

We divided our focus into five compartments: sustainability, solution, approach, education, contact, and women & leadership.

This activity allowed us to organize our ideas and our findings. This was helpful as we finally had a chance to really go into our findings from the last 2 day - what we gained from attending Tokyo Design Week and talking to the representative at Plus International. Organizing this information in such a way helped us approach the issue differently so that we can improve on our existing solutions.

Divisions in Project:

Project Iridescent is working toward gender equality by tackling the issue from three different sides.

Visual Media:

Our Zines are individual art pieces that feature controversial topics and are put out on a monthly basis. Our Zines are self-published and small-circulated books. We are different from other Zines producers because each of the artist working on our Zines, young though they are, have developed a strong artistic identity.

Creative Writing:

Our creative writing team has a group of 4 people working on our blog to provide people with unique voices of people around the world and their opinions on gender inequality in various parts of the world.

Audio Media

Our audio media team is working on composing songs and doing radio broadcasts. We are planning to interview FM Karuizawa in order to gain more information about the radio industry and how our project may or may not fit into it.We aim to spread awareness of our cause by making the public fall in love with our music and our show. The songs, as well as the broadcast, will be featured on our website so that we can promote ourselves and our other teams.

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