HDSE Intensive Workshop 2026

The Humanitarian Design for Social Entrepreneurship (HDSE) Intensive Workshop 2026 was conducted from 19 to 23 July 2026 at the Agastya Foundation Campus, Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh. The workshop brought together 25 selected students from various colleges across India to develop innovative, sustainable, and community-centered solutions for real-world social challenges through the principles of humanitarian design and social entrepreneurship.

The workshop was led by Prof. Eric Obeysekare from Lehigh University, USA, with guidance and mentoring provided by student mentors Jonathan Sferratore, Maeve Timms, and Evan Mazor. Through a combination of interactive lectures, design activities, field visits, and team discussions, the participants were introduced to the Humanitarian Design for Social Entrepreneurship (HDSE) framework and its application in solving community problems.

The participants were divided into multidisciplinary teams of four to five members. During the first four days, each team followed a structured design process that included identifying a locally relevant problem, conducting stakeholder outreach and field interactions in Kuppam, understanding user needs through interviews and observations, generating and evaluating potential solutions, and developing a sustainable business model for the proposed intervention. The emphasis throughout the workshop was on empathy-driven design, innovation, feasibility, and long-term social impact.

On the fifth and final day, all teams presented their proposed solutions before a panel of judges, showcasing their design process, technical feasibility, social impact, implementation strategy, and business model. The presentations reflected the participants' ability to integrate field research with engineering design and entrepreneurial thinking.

The competition results were as follows:

First Place: Team Saarthi, with Ms. Jia Menezes as one of the team members.
Second Place: Team Braille Sense, with Ms. Priyal Shemoan Saldanha as one of the team members.
The HDSE Intensive Workshop 2026 proved to be a highly enriching learning experience for all participants. It provided valuable exposure to humanitarian engineering, design thinking, stakeholder engagement, field-based research, teamwork, communication, innovation, and social entrepreneurship. The workshop strengthened participants' problem-solving and leadership skills while demonstrating how engineering and entrepreneurial approaches can be combined to develop sustainable solutions that address real societal needs.