Through the BRIDGE Project, YSAT delivered intensive design-thinking trainings in Duk, Pibor, and Pajok Payam, helping 270 participants build practical prototypes that respond to real challenges in their own communities.
Duk and Pibor are remote, rural communities in Jonglei State with limited trade routes and few social amenities. Common everyday problems — such as poor transport and the difficulty of preserving seasonal foods — often go unaddressed simply because communities lack access to the tools, materials, and design skills needed to build their own solutions.
Through the Building Resilience and Social Cohesion through Peacebuilding, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Project (the BRIDGE Project), YSAT piloted Creative Capacity Building (CCB) as a way to build a local innovation ecosystem in both Duk and Pibor during 2022. CCB is an intensive, hands-on design process: participants begin with an overview of the design process and a basic sheet-metal and woodworking activity (making a corn sheller), before identifying a problem they want to solve, forming a team, and building an initial prototype. Participants return for a second week to refine their technology into a more fully functioning version.
A total of 245 participants (159 males and 86 females) completed the CCB training in Duk and Pibor, collectively developing 18 new technologies that responded to shared local problems around transport and food preservation. Many participants described being surprised by what they were able to create with locally available materials — a finding echoed across researcher diary observations and validation workshops in both Duk and Pibor.
YSAT extended this same approach to Pajok Payam, delivering a five-day CCB training to 25 participants — 17 males and 8 females — drawn from five Bomas: Caigon, Pajok, Lawagi, Lagi, and Pogee. Participants in Pajok built three further technologies, including a brick oven, a beehive, and a metallic oven, bringing the combined reach of CCB under this project to 270 people across the three locations.
Taken together, Duk, Pibor, and Pajok Payam contributed to a project total of 18 distinct technologies, each grounded in a problem participants identified themselves and designed a working solution for, using skills they can continue to apply long after the training ended.
Each CCB training opened with an overview of the design process, including a case study and a hands-on activity in which participants built a corn sheller while learning basic sheet-metal and woodworking skills. This shared starting point gave all 270 participants across Duk, Pibor, and Pajok a common foundation before moving into their own projects.
On the second day, participants generated a list of problems they wanted to address, selected a project, and were grouped into teams. Teams then carried out team-building activities before gathering information to clearly define the specific local problem their technology would respond to.
Over the remainder of the training, 245 participants (159 males, 86 females) in Duk and Pibor applied the design process to build initial prototypes, returning for a second week to refine them into more fully functioning technologies. Collectively, these teams developed 18 new technologies addressing transport and food preservation challenges common to both communities.
YSAT delivered a separate five-day CCB training in Pajok Payam for 25 participants — 17 males and 8 females — drawn from Caigon, Pajok, Lawagi, Lagi, and Pogee Bomas. Using the same design process, participants built three technologies: a brick oven, a beehive, and a metallic oven, each addressing practical needs identified by the group itself.
Participants trained in Duk and Pibor (159 male, 86 female)
Youth trained in Pajok Payam across five Bomas (17 male, 8 female)
New technologies developed addressing transport and food preservation
Total participants reached through CCB under this project