Join us for an interactive design thinking workshop focused on helping girls unpack problems and create solutions to problems they care about. This workshop is to support girls who are interested in submitting their solutions to the Solv[ED] Youth Innovation Challenge. Learn more about the Challenge and the HP Girls Save the World Prize here.

This Solveathon workshop, co-hosted by MIT Solve and HP's Girls Save the World, will use human-centered design principles to help girls (between the ages of 13-18) generate solutions to real-world challenges, more specifically:

How can you help solve an unmet environmental need and contribute to reversing dire climate issues like deforestation, air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, etc. in your village, town or city?

The workshop will take place virtually from 9am-2pm ET on Saturday, December 11th, 2021. This workshop is open to girls ages 13-18.

Over the course of the one-day, five hour workshop, participants will undergo the following stages:

• Frame - understand the contextual background of the challenge
• Build Community - get to know your team while finding common interests in a problem you want to help address
• Map the Challenge Landscape - visualize the system within which the challenge exists
• Intervene in the System - identify places where impact can be made
• Ideate – generate innovative ideas and solutions in groups
• Design and Plan for Action – further develop the most promising ideas
• Present – consolidate and present ideas to an audience of participants and mentors

Participants are eligible to receive between $300-$600 in micro-grant funding to further develop their ideas after participating in the workshop. Register to participate here. 

We welcome a diversity of backgrounds and experience levels. Everyone has their own passions and skills to bring to the table and can build on one another’s ideas. You don’t need to have an idea or be working on a project to participate in this workshop. This is a great opportunity for those who are just getting started. This will also be an opportunity for you to learn how to more effectively co-create and innovate in a virtual space. Come push boundaries with us, gain new insights, and have fun!

About MIT Solve

Solve is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a mission to solve world challenges. Solve is a marketplace for social impact innovation. Through open innovation Challenges, Solve finds incredible tech-based social entrepreneurs all around the world. Solve then brings together MIT’s innovation ecosystem and a community of Members to fund and support these entrepreneurs to help them drive lasting, transformational impact.

About HP’s ‘Girls Save the World’ (GSTW)

An extension of HP’s commitment to climate action, human rights and digital equity, GSTW was inspired by UN figures that indicate over 80% of people displaced by climate change are women and girls, while the average representation of women in national and global climate negotiating bodies is less than 30%. HP’s GSTW challenge is intended empower girls with a platform to use their vital voices and become agents of change in their communities and future activists, legislators and change-makers.