STEAM Education for Displaced People

Ensure most comprehensive and quality education on STEAM fields and promote lifelong learning opportunities for displaced people.

Educating large numbers of forcibly displaced transforms the environment in which development strategies are designed and implemented. It creates new opportunities and challenges, and it affects poverty reduction efforts positively.

Education in its dual role, both social and economic, has a key role to play in ensuring that world's citizens acquire the key competences needed to enable them to adapt flexibly to such changes. About 65 million people live in forced displacement: almost one percent of the world’s population. Diving into a STEAM curriculum is the next step to the 21st century skills. 

Providing displaced people with access to quality education in the STEAM disciplines is important in order to ensure their successful integration, through their preparation for entry into the educational and employment system of the host countries.

As globalisation continues to confront the world community with new challenges, each citizen will need a wide range of key competences to adapt flexibly to a rapidly changing and highly interconnected world.

The Reference Framework to be followed sets out eight key competences:

Communication in the mother tongue.

Cultural awareness and expression.

Communication in foreign languages.

Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology. 

Digital competence.

Learning to learn.

Social and civic competences.

Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship.

Cultural awareness and expression. 

Those competences will provide full support to the displaced and help them fulfill their educational potential.

 Beneficiaries: 

• All forcibly displaced people with low basic skills, in particular with low literacy, early school leavers, the long-term unemployed and those returning to work after a period of extended leave, older people, migrants, and people with disabilities.
• Local communities. Most of the monetary "spillover" into the surrounding economy occurred when individuals from the camps purchase goods and services from local businesses and households .

Outcomes:

• Access to education, training and employment.
• Learning together and social cohesion:
• Disputes and conflicts can be mitigated, promoting social networks and peaceful coexistence.
• Economic growth for the host communities and poverty reduction

Number of Users who will download the STEAM mobile games. - Users who will use the STEAM mobile games.

Number of users who will complete our modules. - Users who will enroll in the Learning Management System Platform.

Number of projects created by our users. - Users who will use our coding language.

• A unique educational hub that consists of a learning management system, a visual programming language and STEAM mobile games, all of them offered free of charge.

• Activation of the whole learning ecosystem - tutors, parents, youth, learning organizations, to engage in the child’s learning.  
• Co-creation of teaching methodology - our professional development platform helps tutors and learners gain a sense of ownership over designing their learning program.
• Integration of empathy, teamwork, leadership, and problem solving into STEAM curriculum. 

• Students & educators drive the activities, as they learn to apply the skills of empathy, teamwork, leadership, and problem solving both in and outside of school.
• Tutors take the initiative to embed the framework into their student’s environment. After internalizing the principles and concepts, they create self-sustained virtual learning communities.  
• STEAM projects are used to inspire learners and tutors making STEAM being the integration of technology and the human factor.

 Our responsive and free educational Hub will be consisted of: 
• A learning management system (LMS): for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of educational courses or training programs. 
 
• A drag-and-drop coding platform: that makes teaching users the fundamentals of computer science easy and fun and to turn users from players into makers.

• STEAM Mobile Games: Games mirror the way the human mind was designed to learn. They motivate players to take risks and actions, persevere through failures, set and achieve increasingly difficult goals, and devote attention, time, and effort to acquiring knowledge and skills. 

We are currently looking into a range of options in order to secure funding and make StrigiformHub model sustainable on the long-term. Our main funding has come so far from own financial means. At present, we are in the process of establishing business relationships with corporations who are focusing on building their corporate social responsibility image while at the same time applying for EU and Governmental funds as well.

Factors that can limit the ability to extend the StrigiformHub model worldwide are merely financial. Our team will continue to work hard to secure funding and potential social and business ventures. We are extremely confident about the terrific potentials of StrigiformHub as a game changer in closing the educational gap for refugee youth

https://www.facebook.com/StrigiformHub/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3pMxo2DjmF6xmpyOQQ0hlQ

https://twitter.com/StrigiformHub

Through joining the Solve network, we seek strategic partnerships with key companies and people who will help us to scale a successful pilot to locations beyond Greece to reach as many teachers and users as possible.

With the assistance of resources and expertise via the Solve network we hope to scale quickly and add additional programs.

We also hope to contribute our expertise and scalable resources for potential use in other Solve initiatives and provide solutions for other problems related to improving education, futuring, scenario planning and professional development.

Our current partners are:

The Athens Startup Business Incubator: One of the initiatives of the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry for entrepreneurship promotion.

SynAthinaSynAthina: The common space which brings together, supports and facilitates citizens’ groups engaged in improving the quality of life in the city of Athens.

Khan Academy