Students try crazy ideas to solve big problems

STUDENTS from three Geelong schools have pitched some of their crazy ideas to create some crazy good solutions to improve the community.

Hosted by Crazy Ideas College, the second year of the Geelong Social Innovators program saw Year 9 students from Clonard College, Geelong High School and St Joseph’s College gather at Geelong Tech School for the two-day session last week.

Starting with brainstorming on paper and creating prototypes with cardboard, string and tape, the small groups of students refined their ideas and pitched them to a panel of 11 community partners.

“What they’re doing is generating programs, products or services that enrich the lives of their fellow citizens or the community,” Crazy Ideas College founder Zoe Burrows said during the session.

“So they’ve started by thinking about ‘What’s something I care about or I’m interested in?’ and then they’ve generated lots and lots of ideas that solve that challenge, and they’ve selected one of those ideas as their ‘Big Idea’, and we then scale those ‘Big Ideas’ down into what we call a ‘Smart Start Experiment’ to think about what we can do to get moving right now.”

She said the Big Ideas typically fell into at least one of four themes: enhancing health and wellbeing, promoting care for the environment, fostering community connectedness and reimagining learning.

Crazy ideas generated this week include a hybrid chair/bike for the classroom, a bin that tracks what is put inside it to better manage waste, an app that shows the affects of illicit drugs on the body, and a bus service to move young people around.

“We know a lot of our young people essentially don’t have the blinkers on that adults do, and they come up with I guess you could say unusual solutions to really big problems,” Ms Burrows said.

“Hence, they’re a great starting point for coming up with these big, innovative solutions to help us think a little bit differently about how we address challenges.”

Crazy Ideas College will now work directly with each of the three schools to progress the Smart Start Experiments, which could ultimately become fully realised.

“In previous years, we’ve had a big focus on bringing these ideas to life,” Ms Burrows said.

“For example, we have a team of girls that generated an idea about removing single-use plastic from supermarkets and using a compostable bag with seeds in it, you plant it and it grows – that’s in multiple IGA supermarkets in Ballarat.

“A team received $10,000 to bring a Pride Weekend to life, we’ve had a podcast launched, we’ve had a YouTube series, letter writing to nursing homes, an exercise program for primary schools… lots of things.”

The Geelong Social Innovators program is supported by real estate developer ID_Land and is free for schools.