Creation Schools

Think, create and teach

Our country has 47 million inhabitants, but we are not really into science. In fact, Latin America accounts for only 1% of scientists in the world, and Colombia just represents 1% of Latin American scientists. Colombia has 6.6 doctors per every million inhabitants, only 2000 physicists, and a deficit of 40,000 engineers. It implies a slower progress.

These problems may associate with the education infrastructure crisis that our country bears. For instance, in Antioquia-Colombia, at least 1 million dollars are needed in education infrastructure; primary and secondary schools lack laboratories, which may cause students to lose interest in STEM fields and a scientific career. On the other hand, Colombia invests only 0.67% of its GDP in science, therefore many Colombian scientists move abroad leaving our problems unsolved, a repetitive situation in developing countries.

Nowadays, it is frequent for most solutions to rely on creating technological devices. They are usually low-cost implementations brought to communities. However, if the device fails, the community might not be able to repair it, ending up being useless.

That is why we find the social appropriation of knowledge relevant to enhance human talent and turn people into social actors who transform their communities. For two years, we have been working on these identified problems in basic primary and secondary schools:

1. Lack of laboratory equipment for environments to learn based on experience.

2. Expensiveness of laboratory equipment and their maintenance.

3. Lack of methodologies to easily explain sciences and use new technologies.

We have suggested a model of training and replication “schools” to build low-cost laboratories and the methodologies to use them. This a replicable model is based on “Do It Yourself” (DIY) methodologies and the open source initiative:

1. Formation schools: the aim is to develop undergraduate student’s skills, promote research, teach how to identify social needs, and design solution using horizontal learning.

2. School for articulation: professionals train undergraduate students to replicate solutions for science accessibility and education quality, like low-cost laboratories. This step articulates institutions by including students with fellowships granted by the local government who are required to complete social work hours.

3. Investigate school: research allows to identify new problems and propose solutions. It is a required step to constantly improve previous proposals and the model itself.

4. School for replication: trained students can replicate what they learned in primary and secondary schools, thus reaching more communities. Besides, you can repair a device you built.

To date, we have worked with more than 20 communities from Medellin and near rural areas and have built seven prototypes documented at (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HSCtBXcWSo&list=PLMPrn6lWDLCtzOSNHP0Ab7EUSKCLJDjJy)

Our model changes the world because we enhance human talent and students and teachers’ skills, turning them into social actors, who despite lack of recourses manage to come out with alternatives to solve their needs because they recognize the others and their problems.

Our model is a sustainable, it promotes a culture of people who think and create technology, who are essential to transform the society. We empower them.

Our proposal is innovative because it is a social approach based on human talent. It focusses on learning science and technology by the appropriation of open source and DIY initiatives. The fundamentals of our solution promote the replication and sharing of what is learned and created, which makes it sustainable and easy to spread. In fact, our proposal will develop teacher and student’s skills along with solving an education infrastructure problem in Colombia. Teaching how to build low-cost laboratories will help teachers and students to understand, create, and replicate technologies. Then, they may be able to solve other social problems.

We really value the human talent and the humans’ will to teach, that is the reason why science and technology knowledge is crucial for social transformation.

We want people to get used to science and technology as a way to improve their realities, we look forward to a social transformation by appropriation rather than provide technologies. We want people to learn and know, which is needed in our world. In this context, free and open source technologies are an actual mean to do our aim.

Last two years we managed to build prototypes of laboratory equipment with open software, write methodologies for their use, and establish work teams. We have made audiovisual content for diffusion and worked with more than 20 communities.

In the next 12 months, we look forward to consolidating our project legally as a non-profit corporation, with adequate facilities that permit us to make more content and impact larger communities. We recently started to think of this project as a service in order to articulate institutions and be able to go to primary and secondary schools that cannot afford laboratory equipment.

We will strengthen our project scope as an organization that will have two lines of work:

1. Social innovation: this line will aim to create contents about science and technology to improve accessibility and education quality, and also put these contents free. We expect this approach increases vocation for scientific professions in our region.

2. Research and development: we will be an institution that investigates in basic sciences and engineering, exploring the potential of the biodiversity and low-cost solutions to enhance technology developments in our country. We, on the other hand, want to provide the first science co-working in Colombia.

Our solution will be implemented with the support of government institutions, such as secretaries of education, that require methodologies to promote education quality and teacher training. Additionally, we will offer services to private institutions to benefit the communities in which they have an impact.

Colombia and Latin America need a better education infrastructure, thus, providing replicable and low-cost alternatives will allow being competitive.

Since 2017 we have achieved:

-Work with itinerant communities from Medellín through DIY workshops: 630 children and young people who attend to the Explora Park or our pilot primary and secondary schools, 30 elderly adults from La Salle museum, and 40 teachers.

-Reach public in general: Our television program had a YouTube view average of 1050 (without including live rating on local television), and our radio program has an average of 1820 per week.

-We served 40 members of indigenous and farmers communities, and 200 FARC ex-combatants, through science activities and divulgation.

-100 undergraduate students have participated in our group.

Currently, we have results in the aforementioned communities.

In the future, we want to serve in small cities, where there are more needs. We want to impact on average 1000 young people through the scientific literacy, the use of free technologies, and promoting a social culture of knowledge replication and sharing.

We want to continue spreading our contents through media, television, radio, and internet, in order to reach more communities. We look forward to seeing a new generation young people getting interested in STEM fields and science, who finally acquire skills to transform other communities.

Our team professionals:

1 Bacteriologist, Master in Biotechnology.

1 Biomedical engineer, Master in Engineering.

1 Bioengineer, Master in Engineering.

1 Social Communicator

1 Social worker with experience in pedagogy

1 Psychologist

Our team students:

2 Bioengineering students.

1 Social planning and development student.

1 Elecrtronic engineering student

The expertise in different fields of our team allows us to manage to generate diverse strategies, contents, and also provides us with experience in interacting with communities.

We are currently recruiting administrative or management professionals thinking of becoming a non-profit corporation.

In Colombia, it is necessary to improve education levels, to meet the needs related to quality and educational infrastructure.

The Ministry of National Education invests 3.3% of GDP and this figure has a tendency to increase.

In Medellin There are 475 and require methodologies and infrastructure, this city invests 3.7% in education among them extracurricular activities.

Our objective is to access public resources to support and sustain our project.

During these two years of work, we have identified needs in our region associated with education accessibility and scientific vocation, we have worked on solutions to these problems focused on communities’ human talent.

We have also established relationships with governmental and private institutions interested in solving problems regarding education and science accessibility at all education levels. However, despite these achievements, we do not have resources to scale our project and reach the impact we expect. For these reasons, we believe that Solve MIT is an excellent opportunity to receive advice and support, achieving visibility as well.

Currently our barriers are:

1. Funding.

2. Administrative management and marketing.

3. A space dedicated to the project.