Innovative student projects which provide social and environmental benefits.
The 12 week Jump Start program sees students apply design thinking to a wicked problem which is greatly impacting our current and future living standards.
Student projects in the first round of Jump Start focussed on waste.
"How might we tackle waste with student-led social enterprise opportunities which benefit the wider community?"
During the projects students learnt skills to help them thrive in the 21st Century by:
- researching, observing and defining wicked problems and creating future scenarios
- using both divergent and convergent creative thinking skills to tackle their problem head on
- engaging in teamwork, learning about roles, responsibilities and effective time management
- ideating, prototyping and testing their ideas in rapid learning loops to refine their services, products and business models
- learning communication and presentation skills to effectively pitch their ideas.
The social enterprise solutions they propose are the first signs of their newly acquired business strategy and entrepreneurial skills and will provide benefits for the wider community. Students worked towards building viable business models which they will then launch on our partner's crowdfunding website Pozible in 2016. Throughout the program students engage with the community, partners, industry, academics and university students.
How might we reduce food waste and transform our relationship with food?
Year 7 Jump Start students are working on a project that seeks to tackle the wicked problem of food waste and transform our relationship with food. Read more on the blog.
Students Collaborate with FiveOceans to Tackle Ocean Waste and Create Upcycled Products
Pimpama State Secondary College’s Creative Industries Faculty has partnered with FiveOceans, Clean Coast Collective and Design Strategist Tom Allen (Seven Positive), providing a Jump Start experience to develop and manufacture sustainable surf products from waste with Year 9 Industrial Technology & Design (ITD) Students. Read more on the blog.
Zero Waste Schools
Team 'Nucleus' worked on an innovative system based approach which tackles the wicked problem of food waste in our school communities. Their solution proposes a community wide composting system which reduces waste whilst creating rich worm tea and compost for use within the school gardens. They will also sell their nutrient rich products to local households and businesses to generate revenue for future school projects that tackle wicked problems. The Nucleus team is also passionate about providing education and awareness around food waste and hope to scale their solution to other schools in Australia.
E-Waste Gaming workshops
'8-Bit' is a project group passionate about delivering solutions aimed at reducing e-waste and providing awareness and education to tackle this issue. Their innovative workshops will be open to the public and other schools and will see teams deconstructing e-waste and upcycling it to make fully functioning arcade machines. Participants will not only learn in a fun environment but they will get to take their arcade machine back to their school or household, further educating their peers about this important issue.
E-Waste Documentary & Awareness Day
The 'Fuse' team focussed on designing a documentary and day of action which provides the community with creative possibilities to combat e-waste. Firstly, the team would create an informative documentary about e-waste, highlighting local issues. Once developed, the documentary would be used as part of an education kit and training would be provided to school leaders from other schools. On the awareness day, a coordinated effort of school leaders from South East Queensland would show a screening of the documentary in their own schools. They would also give a presentation (provided as part of the education kit) and teach students how to upcycle e-waste into new products. The awareness day would see schools collecting e-waste from the local community to use for the workshops and all excess would be donated to Fuse's social enterprise partner Substation 33. Eventually, Fuse would like to see this awareness day becoming an annual event with communities across Australia participating.
