Creative Capacity Building (CCB)

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MIT D-Lab’s Creative Capacity Building (CCB) methodology promotes community driven innovation, providing a pathway for community members to design solutions to the challenges they face. Underpinning CCB is the belief that anyone can be an active creator of technology, not just a passive recipient.

Over the past 20 years, MIT D-Lab has facilitated CCB workshops in more than 20 countries in dozens of communities across the globe. What began as an experimental workshop with a rural community in northern Uganda in 2007 has since been facilitated within a variety of other community contexts – rural, urban, and refugee camps – across the Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Europe.

CCB Workshops

CCB workshops teach participants from a particular community how to join together and co-create low-cost solutions with local resources. Over the course of five days, 20-25 participants learn and practice the CCB design process (from identifying a shared problem to prototyping), basic maker skills, and teamwork.

The CCB design process is fun and intentionally simple. The activities are hands-on and visual to ensure participants from any literacy level and any educational background are able to participate.

By the end of the workshop, participants leave with a basic prototype, a set of technical skills, and shifted mindsets. Specifically, participants typically share that they feel more confident in their ability to solve challenges using resources that are readily available and feel inspired to share the CCB design process with others in their community.

After a CCB Workshop

CCB works best when it is integrated into community development programs led by local organizations, as a method to jointly identify problems and as a catalyst for collaborative solutions.

When CCB trainings are paired with small grants, space, and technical mentorship, participants continue to develop their prototypes into technologies they can use and that often can generate income.

By building community-level capacity to innovate and adapt to change, CCB has also been used to build community resilience to humanitarian crises and natural disasters caused by climate change.

MIT D-Lab Certified CCB Facilitators

MIT D-Lab has facilitated three CCB Training of Trainers (CCB ToTs) and is currently establishing a training and certification system for CCB Facilitators to increase the accessibility of CCB as a community development tool across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.