- Can design change the way children learn?
- The power of design-thinking at school in India.
Going to School is a creative not-for-profit education trust, based in New Delhi, India, that makes design-driven stories to teach the poorest children on the planet 21st Century Skills at school. With a ground-breaking grant of USD 2.7 million over 2.5 years from The IKEA Foundation, Going to School will reach 200,000 children in 500 schools in Bihar, giving them the skills they need to run their own businesses or get better jobs, and right now, the skills they need to stay in school and transform their lives.
“We are excited to partner with Going to School and help change the lives of 200,000 teens in Bihar. Nurturing entrepreneurial talent is key to ensuring that young people can one day run their own businesses or get good jobs, so they can create better opportunities for themselves and their families.”- Jonathan Spampinato, Head of Communications, The IKEA Foundation. This design intervention in education is powered by stories. Each story teaches children a key entrepreneurial skill - how to identify a problem, take initiative, make a budget and a plan.
What sets the stories apart is colour, art and design.Every Saturday at school, children are given a story, they play a skills game and then over the weekend, outside of the classroom, children complete skills challenge projects - they make children’s newspapers about entrepreneurs they meet and much more. In the same schools, the new ‘kids’ sustainable school challenge’ gives children and their schools a chance to re-design what they learn, to make their schools places they want to be. Winning schools will receive awards to set up school enterprise clubs and action their plans.
Going to School has been working in partnership with the Government of Bihar since 2012.This new grant from the IKEA Foundation is an investment in launching the skills-at-school-story program in seven new districts, bringing all of Going to School’s programs to work together to show that skills at school and the Children’s Scrappy News Service TV Program, can create a tipping point for children to learn skills at scale.
For the first time, in 20 communities, children will be given a chance to build their own newsrooms out of junk and once-loved-things. Using handmade scrapbooks to learn how to apply sustainable design principles, children will build their own newsrooms, identify problems they want to solve, research, write, film and broadcast their own shows, meeting entrepreneurs, exploring sustainable design and having their voices heard. 5,000 children will learn how to tell stories to change the world.
Courtesy by www.businesswire.com
