The winning team of this year’s “Young Innovators” programme for Year 9 students at Nord Anglia School, Dubai are geared up to replicate, or even supersede, the success of their predecessors, by bringing to life their creative idea conceptualised in December.
Taking from the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the team at NAS led by Mr Liam Cullinan, Head of Secondary, and Mrs Nadia Wehbe, Parent Volunteer sitting on the school’s Innovation Board, selected “Quality Education”, as the challenge for all 160 year 9 students in academic year 2018-19 to undertake. They further defined the task to address a specific issue, namely the lack of girls in Nepal successfully completing primary and secondary education. This was a natural progression from the school’s earlier support of Dubai Cares “Adopt a School” programme in Nepal.
The winning idea, based on a simple downloadable E-Tourism Donation (ETD) app, will now be presented to potential suppliers and partners, with the aim of realising the project in the real world. The app, which is being designed to be both engaging and educational and will be advertised in high traffic areas in the city, will cost just USD1 to download, and all proceeds will be donated to the cause of ensuring access for all Nepalese children to free, quality primary and secondary education, as well as leasing additional land alongside the school, for farming. Here, parents will be employed to work the land, planting and harvesting crops for the village to survive on, and the students will also be given the opportunity to be hands on, learn about sustainability as well as acquire a practical life skill. Users of the app will be able to take a virtual reality tour of some areas of Nepal, and will learn more about the project in an impactful way.
“At NAS Dubai we are committed to developing the skills and self-belief in our students, so that they may recognise that they have the power to be the change makers that the world needs, and then give them the autonomy to make that change,” said Liam Cullinan.
The initiative was started four years ago as a result of close collaboration between Liam Cullinan and ex-parent, Jennifer Neff, who has since left Dubai, and Nadia Wehbe has taken on the mantle.
“I’m honoured to continue the great work of Jennifer with the Young Innovators programme at NAS, and I couldn’t be happier that my children attend such a pioneering school that supports initiatives such as this, challenging students to take a bigger picture view of the world, think outside of the box and develop implementable and effective solutions to real world problems” said Nadia Wehbe.
At the Innovation Day that took place on 6th December, 2018, students were divided into 16 groups of 10, and each team was allocated a mentor from the local business community. The teams of Young Innovators worked together, engaging in the different aspects of the challenge, using the design thinking process to consider the real-world problem at hand, and work from a framework for problem solving that includes market research, brainstorming, prototyping and testing solutions. The business mentors were there to inspire, support and guide them through the process, referring to existing solutions that are already being implemented around the world where relevant.
Each team then presented their idea to a panel of three judges, including a representative from Dubai Cares, and were assessed against the following criteria:
- Understanding the problem and its impact, and on whom
- Analysis of a range of solutions
- Teamwork
- Both the creativity and the practicality of the solution – i.e. is it implementable?
- Quality of their pitch
Two teams were selected to go through to the Idea Accelerator Programme which was run as a voluntary after school activity from December ’18 to February ’19, where they were supported to develop their ideas further and the final concept was selected for prospective implementation.
The winners of the previous years’ challenges have all achieved success and international recognition by blue chip organisations, namely:
- 2016: development of a Pokémon Go game, designed to help address the problem of diabetes in children, which was presented to the DHA and subsequently to the UN, where they won the UN Student Innovation Award
- 2017: development of a prototype of an app called ‘Confesh’ in collaboration with Microsoft, with the aim of addressing bullying in schools by encouraging students to share their experiences and receive confidential support
- 2018: the design of an interactive game called ‘Expop’, where visitors to Expo 2020 could interact with each other and take part in engaging games, to win merchandise or redeem points, while waiting in queues. This was the winning entry into Expo 2020’s challenge, as part of Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation’s (DIDI) Project Design Space challenge
