Design Thinking Training for High Schoolers
- Pre-Seed
Our solution aims to equip young people with the mindsets and tools at an early age to employ themselves in solving the world's many problems through innovation and entrepreneurship.
In Kenya as with many African countries youth will face the problem of massive unemployment as the number of new jobs created do not match the numbers of young people graduating from schools.
They will also join other world youth in living in a planet faced with challenges of people's well-being and livelihoods, sustainable cities and a planet that needs a lot of tender, loving care after being taken for granted for ages.
It only makes sense that the youth the work force of the future, employ themselves in solving these new challenges facing the world, leverage on the connectivity they have as global youth and leverage on new developments in technology.
Design thinking will give them the mindsets to re-imagine the world and to build what is necessary for its future and their future.
We do not give them certain futures we give them the tools to be comfortable with uncertainty and to make the planet beautiful again and have a livelihood while at it.
Our solution solves the problem of uncertain futures for young people in the 21st century.
Instead of trying to give them certain futures we give them mindsets and tools to embrace ambiguity | to solve problems | to create new things (products, systems, governments, world orders, interventions, services)
At this early stage it involves physical delivery maybe at some point we can toolkit it, make it modular... so that any young person anywhere in the world can use it to learn and do whatever they need to go and do.
For the last two years I was privileged to be part of an interesting program here in Kenya called Sote ICT schools club. The founders of this initiative believed by introducing internet access, computer labs in a few select schools in rural Kenya and then teaching them how to run virtual companies it would change their lives.
Two years... 6000 students... 12 schools later they built Sote Hub a community technology innovation hub with the first batch of 16 post high school founders
Faced with such overwhelming evidence I am now a believer. I want to do my part
1. High school students in Kenya, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Rwanda
Deployment
- Meeting of trainers and interested practitioners
- Formulation of easy toolkit
- Reach out to schools in setting up club days or weekend days
- Trainers move to schools and train
2. High school teachers
- They undergo a training
- A challenge is posed for the year for the teacher and their students to work on
- Schools showcase solutions to the challenge in regional meetups
Number of students signed up for the sessions - Training of high school students
Number of entries in the bi-annual challenge - Students taking part in challenges and solutions produced
Number of students who sign up for the continuity support program with hubs - Students becoming founders post high school
- Adolescent
- Lower middle income economies (between $1006 and $3975 GNI)
- Low-income economies (< $1005 GNI)
- Secondary
- Suburban
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Consumer-facing software (mobile applications, cloud services)
- Digital systems (machine learning, control systems, big data)
- Imaging and sensor technology
- Materials & nanotechnology
- Robotics
It crowd sources solutions from the youngest most hopeful part of our society and introduces them to possibilities of what technology can do and offers those who choose to keep doing it a connection to communities in Hubs.
The young people think of possibilities this will stretch the technology available to meet their expectations.
They will bring new thinking into each innovative community they join post high school
By using young high school students we believe they will tackle problems they have grown up with.
We will equip them with tools and guidance to interrogate the causes and redefine the problems and to test them with the communities.
By picking pre-set challenges for the year we will have a targeted audience to underserved communities.
Students who choose to work on their solutions post high school will be supported in deploying their solution to their community.
By working in community technology hubs they will join other founders who spend their time trying to solve community problems through social enterprise.
We will help test prototypes and products with final users and iterate on the solutions
- 1-3 (Formulation)
- Kenya
Previously we run our training for free
So as we tested this we could sustain ourselves from the payments from the other paid training and consultancy especially those that have the same audience.
Number of Human Centered Design Practitioners is low
In Kenya there about 25 and most are engaged in actual field work, product and service design not in training.
Number of Community Technology hubs
The number of community hubs has decreased. Famous hubs are now moving to support growth startups and take equity or charge for co-working space. Such terms do not favor young founders straight out of high school
- Less than 1 year
- 6-12 months
- 6-12 months
https://medium.com/the-startup-heart/design-thinking-for-high-schoolers-82696ce00423
- Future of Work
- 21st Century Skills
- Online Learning
- Refugee Education
- STEM Education
To start a movement
We need numbers and skills to deliver the training and the inspiration.
To grow a culture.
For us to meet all the needs of our society and the systems not working we need to grow a culture of young creative problem solvers from high school level
To grow a community
Our community will be based on a lifestyle of social entrepreneurship with founders helping each other to grow and to have their creation diffuse into the market
Sote Hub and Sote ICT program
Design 2 Transform program by Web4All Limited
Regular high school curriculum
Co - Founder and Business Design