Sustainable Development Goals in Schools

Deadline: 29 October 2018, 12:00 noon CET

Background

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are part of the The 2030 Agenda for change and transition to a sustainable society. The agenda and its global goals is adopted by countries worldwide with a commitment to lead the world to a sustainable future. Implementing the ambition of the goals is a shared responsibility, but requires action and broad participation from different actors throughout society.

OUTCOMES OF THE OPEN INNOVATION CALL

Smart Cities Accelerator is a project-based partnership consisting of leading universities, companies and cities in southern Sweden and Denmark, co-funded by EU’s Interreg scheme. The aims of the project are to develop smart cities and sustainable solutions for intelligent use of energy. Part of the focus is on education and includes students and school environments in finding new solutions and fostering behaviours that can contribute to sustainable development in the Öresund region and beyond. Developing sustainable schools and supporting learning environments is a common concern and ambition for the project partners, for which the 2030 Agenda is a natural starting point.

The challenge of this Open Innovation Call targets innovative ways to highlight and raise awareness about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in existing and new school environments, supporting sustainability as an educational idea. This call searches for functional, informative, playful and cost-efficient innovations inviting children in different ages to learn more about the SDGs and how they can be assessed in daily life to support the transition to a more sustainable society.

Description

Taking the background of the call as starting point, the aim of this call for innovation is to make children more aware of and understand the meaning of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and how these goals are applicable in the daily life. The call wants to see visual innovations with focus on the visible aspects of the design and targets, especially products/innovations that helps highlighting and presenting the SDGs in a way that:

• Are appealing to children in different ages from preschool up to age 16
• Can come at hand for schools and teachers who wants to include aspects of the SDGs and sustainability in their education and various learning environments.

The design should invite children to interact with and come closer to the SDGs, making the goals more graspable, and creating a relationship between the children and the goals. Sustainability is more than a buzzword, and the goals should be explained in ways that children can understand and relate to.

The Challenge

If we are to successfully reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, we need to make sure that children are well informed of the challenges we face, all over the world as well as in our own backyards. As we target the children, a successful implementation can improve the likelihood that our world will develop in line with the global goals. Change starts with the children – our future.

Hence, we need to raise a higher awareness about the SDGs among children – and school is the natural arena for this to take place. This challenge targets innovative ways to highlight the SDGs in various school and learning environments. Regardless the design, the product should be functional, informative and playful at once, inviting children to learn more about the goals and how to work with them.

The emphasis should be on the visualisation of the goals; the design in which they are represented should therefore be thought through thoroughly. Education and learning are natural elements that plays an important part in the innovation process – how can children learn and understand about the sustainability goals through a design product? What challenges are there in the content of the goals and in the language in which they are written?

One design fits all (Replicability)

It is necessary that the design is flexible and replicable, as the physical conditions varies a lot between schools.  This product should be useful for schools all over Europe.

As the target group is schools, the cost for buying and installing the design must be addressed and considered when the product/solution is presented. The cost can be a deciding factor if schools decide to purchase the product or not. A product that is too expensive and advanced will most likely face obstacles for being further implemented.

Taking loads off (Functionality)

The design should invite children to play or interact, but possibly also function as a support in education. The aim is to not give the teachers an extra work load, but rather help and support and offer viable alternatives to teach about sustainability. It should be an easy to use add-on for teachers and something they can easily choose to use in their daily education.

Form is up to you (Innovation)

With all this in mind, there are no specific criteria or form for how the product must be designed or built – this is up to the contesters of this call to decide, using their expertise, knowledge, creativity and ideas to lead the way to great solutions. It is the use and outcome that decides the form.

Exploring existing material

We urge contestants to familiarize themselves to already existing learning and educating material dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goals, i.e. http://worldslargestlesson.globalgoals.org. We are looking for innovation, design products and ideas with strong emphasis on the abovementioned visualization aspect.