Project Invent: Students Designing Impactful Technologies

High school invention teams tackle real-world problems.

In an ideal education system, we would be teaching students how to make the world a better place. Instead, students learn how to do well on tests and compete for the highest grade. Top students graduate with high GPAs, elite college acceptances, and little experience in the real world.

If we want to build a better world, the graduation requirement shouldn't be 4 year of English, 3 years of math, and 3 years of history. It should be ensuring that every student knows that their unique ideas can make a difference. However, school currently discourages uniqueness. Instead, it teaches students how to get the right answer, not solve problems creatively. 

Project Invent is a nonprofit organization that teaches high school students how to use design and technology to solve real-world problems and become active creators in building a better world. We pair teams of students with individuals in their community who face unique everyday challenges, and pose those as opportunities to design new technologies. Students have designed everything from fall detectors for senior citizens to smart wallets to help the blind detect bill denominations.

Students in the program have already seen huge results. 60% of teams have placed in national innovation competitions. 80% continue their projects after the first year. 95% find the program changed the way they think about their own ability to make change. 

Our focus is three-prong: build empathy, build skills, build confidence. And with that, we build our next generation of changemakers.

Our solution is unique because we pair each team with real people, so students are on-the-ground addressing real problems. We select community partners who face unique challenges, such as a disability or bias, and students learn how to empathize with their stories and translate them into engineering impactful solutions. This doesn't happen in just one workshop. We build year-long learning experiences where students confront difficult decisions, struggle through technical challenges, celebrate authentic wins, and share their work publicly and for funding. Every student is pushed outside of their comfort zone, and every student grows as an empathetic changemaker.

The future is technology, so we need to make sure all our students are equipped with the skills to participate. However, currently, only 17% of engineering degrees go to females and 2% of venture funding go to all female founding teams. We are limiting who our creators are in the world. With Project Invent, we're teaching engineering as a way to make a difference and solve human problems. We have already increased engineering participation in our partner schools by 250% through this model. Students learn real skills like programming, electronics, and 3D modeling through making impact.

We are expanding to 10 teams this year and 100+ by 2019. This will continue to grow exponentially as more schools adopt our programming to inspire youth invention teams on their own campuses. We also hope to increase our media presence to popularize the narrative about engineering as a way to make impact. 

As Project Invent grows over the next 3-5 years, we hope to be the pioneer in making engineering for impact a more dominant narrative. We also hope to fundamentally shift how communities and schools partner to create powerful learning experiences for students. By making community partnerships a norm, it will be easier for schools everywhere to start establishing powerful community relationships that provide an opportunity for students to solve real-world problems. As more students succeed through Project Invent, the power of student problem-solving will also be recognized as a powerful force. We are excited to pioneer both of these efforts.

We are currently serving:

- 120 students

- 10 teachers

- 25 community partners

In 12 months we hope to be serving:

- 750+ students

- 100 teachers

- 150 community partners

Connie's an MIT graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering. She has been facilitating invention education for the last 5 years and has been an inventor herself for the past 6. As a former teacher at The Nueva School and frequent presenter at education conferences, she is well-connected with the education community.

Our funding will come from program fees, individual donors, corporate donors, and foundation grants.

Solve will become a huge partner in driving our mission forward: we are striving to create impactful learning experiences through technology and change public perception about engineering as an impactful career. MIT was the first place I learned that engineering could be about making impact. The work out of MIT hugely influence the lives of people around the world everyday, and I know would be the best advocate for this work. 

Schools are often slow to adopt innovation and are a risk-averse customer. In other words, few schools are early adopters, willing to take on the risk of a newly offered program. However, with the MIT brand backing our work, we know we can deliver powerful learning experiences to students everywhere through our tested model.