PROJECT YEAR
2025-2026
PROJECT PARTNER
The Future of Humanitarian Design HUD
KITs are pervasive in humanitarian action. They are easy to transport, reach affected populations in an emergency swiftly and are easy for those providing care to work with. The core aim of this project is to provoke reflection on how kits are situated in reality and on the ethico-political circumstances shaping the making of kits. The report is divided into the annotated infographic and the production of podcasts that were the final deliverables of this project. The infographic’s annotated section is intended to contextualize the kits design justification, emergence, making of (gendered) body, co-creation, and the evolution of kits that have been integrated in a visual form to the infographic. The podcasts are intended to provoke a broad audience to reflect on the ethical and political dimensions of humanitarian kits in the context of the exhibition. We decided to narrow the research focus on Menstrual Health Management Kits (MHM), which have today become a major part of sanitation and relief efforts in places of humanitarian crisis. In essence, humanitarian kits aren't simply objects of care. They are political artifacts encoded with assumptions about bodies, households, and needs, shaped by institutional logics that often outpace the realities they claim to address. This research project seeks to make some of those assumptions audible, and visible tracing the distance between a kit designed in Geneva and the displaced person who receives it in DRC, and asking what is lost, added, or distorted in that journey.
2025-2026
The Future of Humanitarian Design HUD