The Office of Displaced Designers (ODD) is an independent, charitable creative organisation that provides educational and professional development opportunities in design. Bringing together refugees and locals in the central office space in Mytilene, ODD supports multi-disciplinary projects related to and/or impacting: the built environment, protection issues or cultural understanding.

“Aspiring creatives based on Lesvos have been matched with international design professionals who will support individual projects during a three month pilot program. Proteges become active members of an inspiring creative community in diverse disciplines including photography, film-making and architecture.”

I worked with an Afghan teenager on creating videos to teach Greek to Farsi’s speakers.
While his project was defined from the beginning, I used the mentoring sessions to show him research methods (qualitative, quantitative survey, …) and convey the idea that he could create a better project by asking his potential users about their actual needs.
During this three-month pilot programme, we talked on a a weekly basis, met every three weeks and spent one afternoon in One Happy Family to interview different people and conduct a survey.

As a committed creative, he had made at the end of the programme, 20 videos of about 10 minutes each, and had share it to the residents of Moria camp.