The whole reason the CSC program exists is to improve the lives of communities all around the world. For my team specifically, we are working with an incubator in the hopes of creating more stable businesses to improve youth unemployment. This week, the whole IBM team came together for an event to help improve the lives of another community: the elderly.

China is currently trying to figure out how to better take care of their elderly population. While this obviously isn’t a problem that can be solved in one community service event, we did our best! Our IBM group planned a Design Thinking session and invited people from various companies and interests to participate. It was a little slow at first, but once people understood the concept, they really started to get into it.

 My IBM team member Wellington was my co-facilitator.

Our group came up with a lot of great ideas, like a matchmaking event and an elderly university to help them continue to learn new skills. I hope that the people who attended these sessions can actually act on some of these ideas for the elderly in Chengdu. But if not, at least we taught them a different way of looking at and solving problems!

This is how thrilled we were after the successful Design Thinking workshop.