VOICES
Big question
SUE
JENKINS
Creative director
at Luckychair
http://www.luckychair.comEach year at my university, I
have my undergraduate design
students collectively design and
build a website for a local non-profit
organisation. In academia, we call
this ‘service learning’ whereby
students grow their skills working
on a real-world UX design /
development project under the
teacher’s art direction, for the
benefit of a company that also
serves the community. One of our
recent projects was creating a
website for Jack Of Hearts PA, Inc,
which supports families of
paediatric cardiac patients. Each
student designs and builds a sample
homepage in WordPress, the client
picks one and the class team-builds
the site. Everyone grows!
Our panel of seven delve into the topic of philanthropy and reveal how they’ve
harnessed their abilities for the benefit of society
HOW HAVE YOU USED WEB
DESIGN SKILLS FOR GOOD?
INDUSTRY INSIGHTAASHNI
SHAH
CEO, Elixir Labs
aashni.meOne of the things I enjoy most about technology
is how easy it is to combine with any other
passion such as philanthropy. I’ve been using my web
design skills at Elixir Labs – a non-profit – with a
vision to enable social, environmental and economic
good by partnering and empowering other non-profits
and building technical solutions with them. We’re
working on projects to combat slavery, make legal aid
easier to access and empower women to support
themselves and their communities.ROB FENECH
Freelance web designer and
developer
http://www.robfenech.co.ukBefore I became a freelancer, I
worked for a big charity, Anthony
Nolan. I saw that although they had a
great IT team and marketing team, the
digital side was still lacking. When I
went freelance, I reached out to some
small charities to see if they had the
same issue and, of course, they did. So
I started FreelanceFriday. The last
Friday of every month I work with a
small charity to help with their website
or digital marketing, all pro bono. It
gives a great feeling of satisfaction.