Kerala flooded badly in 2018, and then again in 2019. The question for the Kerala Designers Collaborative was what a community of creative professionals could offer beyond a donation. Money helps, but skills have a different kind of reach.
Skill for Kerala was a platform where designers, illustrators, writers, and anyone with a sellable skill could pledge hours of their work. Clients found them through the platform, paid directly to the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund, and sent the acknowledgement certificate back to the person who did the work. No intermediary handling money, no overhead.
The platform went live and the response came quickly. 168 people pledged 3,646 hours across design, writing, workshops, and other services. The News Minute and New Indian Express covered it.
It was not a large project technically. It was a question of what a community does when the moment asks something of it.
[platform screenshot]