Since 2016, a group of engineering students from NYU Abu Dhabi has spent a week each in Dharavi, Mumbai. They ‘handstorm’ technical interventions that can marginally improve the quality of life in the neighbourhood, which is one of the largest unplanned settlements in Asia. These workshops were the outcome of a collaboration with NYUAD’s Engineers for Social Impact (EfSI) program and urbz. Engineers for Social Impact (EfSI), supports and complements the mission and goals of the Engineering Division at NYUAD through a co-curricular program that emphasizes experiential learning via field work as well as the development of locally sustainable engineering designs and technologies. urbz has been based in Dharavi for almost two decades. It has operated as one among hundreds of thousands of enterprises that constitute the neighbourhood’s dynamic productive fabric. Its primary goal has been to learn from Dharavi and engage with it in the realm of urban planning, with special emphasis on local, user-generated and inhabitant-led strategies. urbz looks at Dharavi as a repository of practical ideas and good practices that have not been recognized or validated. Dharavi is also incredibly open to new ways of doing things. It’s flexible and adaptable spatial and economic energy is an ideal environment for bringing in other knowledge and skills, and creating a live environment for inspiring and testing new ideas.

The goals of NYUAD’s Engineers for Social Impact are to:

-Immerse students in a culture that promotes invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship through an experiential learning process rooted in the global community.

- Build a forum for developing and sharing ideas and knowledge towards creating sustainable technological solutions that improve the lives of end users in the Bottom of the Pyramid socio-economic groups.

- Serve as a platform for exploring technology entrepreneurship models for social impact that are economically self-sustainable.

- Create long-term partnerships with corporations, non-governmental organizations, and government agencies to provide students with experiential opportunities as well as pathways for future engagements.

urbz’ ‘Handstorming’ workshops are an ideal platform for aims and objectives such as these. ‘Handstorming’ is the physical, creative alter ego of brainstorming, and the prime methodology of urbz. It consists of getting involved in local contexts and facilitating the production of objects, tools and systems that become part of the everyday life of those spaces. Handstorming stimulates the mind and leads the process of reflection and conceptual elaboration in a manner that does both, grounds ideas as well as helps them fly.