Source: Future Minds
Future Minds: catalysing sustainable development through youth empowerment
Through its educational programme on sustainable development, Swedish NGO Future Minds serves as a resource for training teachers and engaging students in solving local sustainability challenges. The organisation facilitates collaboration between secondary schools and representatives from the municipality, local businesses, NGOs, and academia and arranges a variety of events, including sustainability hackathons.
The educational programme is structured around three core modules:
1. Knowledge: equips students and teachers with knowledge, tools and educational materials on sustainable development.
2. Outreach: organises events, activities, hackathons, and study visits to municipalities and businesses to provide real-world context to students while helping businesses to future-proof their ways of working.
3. Expertise: offers assistance and mentorship to graduate students undertaking research projects or group assignments on sustainability issues.
Hackathons to develop solutions to local challenges
A cornerstone of the work performed by Future Minds is to run hackathons. Participating municipalities and businesses present real-world sustainability challenges to participating secondary schools and they get to choose the cases that they find most interesting and devote some time to preparation. During the hackathon, students transition from comprehending the root of the problem to generating potential solutions. Then they fine-tune a selected idea and pitch it to the case owner for potential implementation.
Hackathons offer a multitude of benefits for municipalities:
Youth engagement: hackathons serve as platforms for engaging youth in real-world problem solving and enable natural dialogue between young people and municipal leaders.
Joint problem solving: hackathons create an environment where municipalities and youth work together to find practical solutions to sustainability challenges.
Visibility: hackathons allow municipalities to showcase their initiatives, thereby educating the next generation of leaders.
Future residents: by engaging young people in developing solutions to sustainability challenges, municipalities are also preparing them to join the local workforce and strengthening their ties with the local community.