Future Ready Teachers Project

The Design-a-thon method builds 21st century skills at each stage of the process. The project aims at training teachers across India in the Design-a-thon Method and facilitating Design-a-thon workshops with children cthereby creating a country-wide platform for children to design, create and share ideas on creating a more sustainable future. 

The Design-a-thon method aims at radically re-imagining the way we see children, empowering them to be change makers, leaders, activists, and innovators! 

Future ready learning environments promote global citizenship, focus on problem-based learning, build digital literacy, and promote creative and design-based thinking. However, learning environments in India (and other developing nations) have been forced to focus on ensuring basic learning outcomes in under-resourced and overcrowded context. Ensuring that children from developing nations have the 21st century skills to transform their economies, and build a sustainable future, children and their educators need to be equipped with the core competencies to develop these skills. 

The solution is aimed at elementary school learners (aged 8-12 years) and their educators. It will create learning environments that radically re-imagine the way we view our children, empowering children to think creatively, design innovations for a sustainable future, and develop the 21st century skills required to engage competitively in future global economies. Teachers are equipped with the skills required to promote this innovative, creative and problem-based thinking and are supporting through ongoing capacity development through their participation in the Design-a-thon global community. 

The project positions digital literacy as a key enabler of future ready learning environments and integrates the use of digital tools to develop 21st century skills in contexts of classroom overcrowding. This is well aligned to the National Education Policy that aims at creating future ready learners and learning environments, as well as its prioritisation of analysis, critical thinking, and conceptual clarity skills. Equipping children, their educators, and learning environments to the needs of current and evolving working environments. The vast majority of teachers in our network are women and are on the forefront of transforming learning environments for future readiness. There is often a misconception that future ready skills development requires high tech solutions and large capital investments. However, the Design-a-thon method has been designed to be used on a spectrum of technological advancement using existing resources within communities to promote creative and design-based thinking. 

Emer Beamer is founder and Learning Lead at Design-athon Works, Empowering Children to Design a Better World. She is also an Ashoka Fellow and has co-founded both Butterfly Works,  Co-Creation for a Better World and NairoBits, Design College for youth from slum areas, Nairobi, Kenya. 

During a design-a-thon children are guided through a 7-step experiential process, linked thematically to a bigger global challenge such as water scarcity, poverty, deforestation, or citizenship. By taking part in a design-a-thon, many children discover unlimited possibilities, for themselves and for the world. 

 Through each design-a-thon, children . . .

• Acquire 21st Century skills: creative thinking, collaboration and global citizenship

• Develop an agile mindset by working hands-on with new technologies

• Practice presenting to an audience in a supportive environment

• Feel a sense of agency to take action on issues that matter to them!

The Design-a-thon method also ses design-driven and problem-based learning as a  community listening tool in which data can be collected on the efficacy of design-based learning methods and their link to future ready skills development in diverse contexts. Since the Design-a-thon Method is being applied in over 45 countries around the world and a global children Designathon is held annually, we have collected a significant amount on data that can be used to track children's future readiness over time and in diverse contexts.With focused designations that are highly problem-based and centred around global developmental challenges, our design-a-thons are also a unique opportunity to gather data on the interest, concerns and level of understanding that children have around these challenges.

Design-a-thon Works aims at radically shifting the way we see children, empowering them as change makers in the building of a better world. To do so, we create learning environments within our target countries (and beyond) that are more conducive to problem-based and design-driven learning. We also aim at using the Design-a-thon Method  to advocate for children's participation in local, regional and global decision making process across the public, private and civil society sectors.  

1. To grow our network partnerships in Nigeria, Tanzania, Finland, Indonesia, Democratic Republic Congo, and Nepal

2. To equip our online platform with further learning material, capacity development tools, and networking opportunities 

3. To further develop the Design-a-thon method under new themes (gender, climate change etc) and to make it as responsive to local contexts as possible especially overcrowded learning environments and underserved communities 

1. A million children are empowered as changemakers and have developed 21st century skills

• No. of innovations/actions designed by children in the design-a-thon process
• Percentage of innovations designed by children in the design-a-thon process that have developed or draw on STEM
• Level of theme-specific behaviour change amongst children who have participated in the design-a-thon workshop
• No. of prototypes designed in the design-a-thon process that have been actualised through public, private or civil society sector support
• Percentage of children with a notable increase in their content-based knowledge after participating in the design-a-thon workshop

2. Network partners and hubs are positioned as key implementing agents of the Design-a-thon Method and Approach

• No. of design-a-thon workshops hosted by network partners and hubs
• No. of narrative accounts on promoting problem-based and design-driven education around SDG-related topics
• No. of development innovation competitions participated in or won

3. The Design-a-thon Method is being used to advocate for children's participation in local, regional and global decision making process across the public, private and civil society sectors

• No. of projects in which the design-a-thon method is being used by project partners as a community listening tools
• No. of new partnerships formed amongst community members

4. Learning environments within our target countries (and beyond) have become more conducive to problem-based and design-driven learning

• No. of teachers trained in the design-a-thon method

We are constantly adapting our online tools and digital applications in order to respond to the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic on the learning contexts of children. We are also exploring ways to further adapt our method to large classrooms and overcrowded contexts 

We have already secured funding to further grow our platform and have strengthen our partner network in order to design joint service offerings for diverse context 

8

Emer Beamer co-created Butterfly Works  with young people in the Global South.  See http://www.butterflyworks.org The eLearning programs she co-created, such as ‘the World starts with Me’ (Uganda 2004) and ‘Learning about Living’ (Nigeria 2007) have been adapted for 15 countries in Africa and Asia and won prizes from amongst others the United Nations.  Her very first social enterprise was NairoBits, http://www.nairobits.com, in 2000, a web design college for young people from the informal settlements around Nairobi. What began as an art project is now a family of schools in 5 African countries with some 10,000 graduates securing jobs in the formal tech sector.

Nancy Abraham Sumari is a Tanzanian author, business woman and social entrepreneur. She is the Managing Director of Bongo5 Media Group Ltd, The Executive Director of The Neghesti Sumari Foundation and The Jenga Hub, as well as a published author of the children's book series, Nyota Yako.

Anne Sallaerts uses her 15 years of experience as a leader & designthinker in both the corporate and NGO world, mainly focussed on business development, creative concepting and innovation. She gets her energy from driving (young) people, companies, projects, ideas and teams forward. She lives her life by the guidance of four core elements: learn, work, love & play.

Our leadership teams consist of three women, we have made significant strides in ensuring maximum representation within our team both in terms of gender, race and geographical distribution. Our team brings together educators, development practitioners and designers to ensure the maximum responsiveness of our service offering.  Since we serve children, we have developed an expert panel of children to help inform our work and service offering design. 

Jenga Hub

Karkhana 

HaritaDhara Research Development and Education Foundation (HRDEF)

Butterfly Works 

We would like to further grow our network, amplify the reach of our work through strategic partnerships that help promote the voices of children in International and local decision making and raise funds to further develop our service offering. 

• Monitoring & Evaluation (e.g. collecting/using data, measuring impact)

We would like to further develop a business case for investment in innovative education approaches. In order to do so, we need to identify metrics upon which to measure the social and economic impact of investment in these education models and learning environments. 

• Product / Service Distribution (e.g. expanding client base)

We would like to diversity our client base in term types of clients (embassies, international development organisations, etc) as well as geographic reach