Profile: Norma Jara Arellano

About Norma Jara Arellano : "Whoever does not live to serve does not serve to live" is a phrase attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta that often resonates with me when I am questioned about my motivation to live. Y I believe that, although I am still halfway through the course to become an Industrial Designer, in each step I take I feel that everything is making sense and that need to help and direct my life toward solving problems or finding options to improve the life of others is finding a more efficient channel than that offered by other professional careers.

I understand that in my 25 years with an already culminated career, the whole university experience and the early years of employment allowed me to have a broader picture about which channels had as viable options to be an agent of change as I had always wanted. Being that the freedom that granted me the last years when I studied the specialty of Economics, allowed me to remember and re-explore a creative field that I had been left out for a long time, because until then I had not come up with any way to unify what I liked, knew how to do, and wanted to dedicate my whole life.

I remember that during the years I studied economics until I graduated, I learned a lot, the university had achieved its goal of depositing a dose of different areas of knowledge and I had become a more reflective person; there the first problems began, because my plans were beginning to no longer fit. And it is that when I was little I wanted to study medicine or something similar, when I grew up and I was shown the results of the vocational orientation exam, I felt that everything fit, I wanted to eliminate poverty, decrease informality and fight all the ills that made that our country always saw itself as " a beggar sitting on a gold bank " but even though in the Economy we studied " how it works " and " how should it be " , I did not find that "to make what is like should be". I re-evaluated my vocation and the same result came back to me; However, in the interview with the psychologist I understood that the test only measures some things and that motivation is what ultimately pushes us to make our plans come true.

Almost at the end of my Economics Studies , I found a small space in which I felt comfortable, we began to study indicators, and the way in which the study of a problem is justified, in the case of the Economy, an economic problem is that that is mainly reflected as something that affects the society something that has a substantial impact , and the usual was always to find that "something" that affected the GDP, which is what we should all worry about along with inflation , since crises tend to show up and manifest themselves there.

This is how I found the microenterprises, which in Peru are extremely important, not only because of the number that appear and perish every year, also because of what it mean for the country and the families that live on it. All these issues about entrepreneurship and Start ups all linked to concepts of the fourth factor, and the importance of business creativity, to turn obstacles around and turn them into opportunities, a popular motto of successful entrepreneurs who went through similar crises to many microentrepreneurs face day a day; All that made my motivation to help this important part of the Peruvian economy reappear.

I worked for a year in research around these issues, I found out about the funds that the government and the private sector directed to finance this type of projects, which were relatively new, which indicated that yes, indeed, the project was finally being given. attention they deserved. However, even though I had the faculties to develop myself in that channel, I realized that the artistic and creative part that I had taken up in parallel had broadened my options, and the need to be a more active agent, because I felt that way in That moment, he reassessed my life plan.

This is how all my desires, dreams and plans landed in following my path as an Industrial Designer, because of the options I had I feel that it is the one that best fills that need to investigate and propose a concrete solution to a society's need, and more even now that I continue researching and discovering that Industrial Design is not only focused on product design, but also on systems, and mainly innovation, which is what has allowed us as a society to grow and develop.

I know that the road is still long, because each time and context are posing new challenges, now it is undeniable how important it is to take into account the environment, an aspect that also interested me before discovering its economic cost in society. In this way I think that being a little more aware of how society works, and how it relates in the framework of productive systems with the different disciplines and sciences in the world, allows me to have a broader view than before they only made me feel frustrated because the viable solutions that a career like Economy allowed me were limited by the political group in turn; Industrial Design to be in an alternative field, responds more to the needs of society whose rules of survival have a more commercial nature, survive the product or system that best fits the culture of the time, resolves the problem of society, all at a lower cost (commercial and social) than its competitors.

 

Good design deserves great recognition.

A' Design Award & Competition.