Creating an educational kit to help children embrace multiculturalism
The Estoril Institute for Global Dialogue wanted to activate their brand with those who will shape our future - children.
The main goal was to envolve them directly in the Estoril Conferences event by giving them the stage to discuss and debate the topic of migrations. But how can children learn and engage with such a complex topic in order to be able to deliver this output? How can they deliver a meaningful output that helps them and their parents adopt new mindsets?
HUSE Innovation developed an educational kit based on the design thinking methodology to enable kids to understand and embrace the power of multiculturalism at school and at home.
But we needed to adapt this huge challenge to the mindsets and abilities of children aged 8-9 years old. So we formulated a creative challenge to entice and inspire the children through the process: How would you present the human race to aliens? This challenge formulation allowed them to look beyond the concepts of race, colour and religion and embrace the concept of humanity instead.
The kit was divided into 6 activities that taught children concepts such as research, empathy and prototyping. The activities started in the classroom but were designed to be completed/complemented at home. The kit consisted of:
- THE BOOK "VOU ALI JÁ VENHO - SOBRE MIGRAÇÕES E COMICHÕES" A story developed specifically for this project that created a parallelism with the activities and brought an element of storytelling into the process, which is highly valued by children.
- 1 INDIVIDUAL PASSAPORT and a set of stickers to guide the children through the activites and help them keep a record of their work.
- 1 TRAY inspired by the story to be used in the classroom.
- 1 THREE DIMENSIONAL "PUZZLE" with the characters of the book to be built in the classroom as the activities progressed.
- 1 TEACHER MANUAL to guide the teacher through the activities.
The kit was implemented in 4 classrooms in the council of Cascais in the 3 months that preceded the Estoril Conferences. On the 1st of June - the international children's day - the children were then the stars of the event by showcasing their ideas on how to present the human race to aliens in front of 600 of their peers.
CREDITS | Photos: Paulo Albuquerque| Product Design: Francisco Pitschieller | Writer: Ricardo Henriques | Illustrator: Alberto Faria