On April 21st, The KAUST School (TKS) opened its doors for the entire KAUST community to celebrate World Creativity and Innovation Day, with a focus this year on problem-solving to achieve the UN global goals.
Students displayed the results of their Future Heroes Challenge, a two-week initiative run in partnership with the KAUST Office of Sustainability and KAUST Smart, that fostered students’ design thinking skills to materialize creative and innovative solutions to current sustainability challenges.
With the guidance of the Office of Sustainability, students explored the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), selected a challenge associated with one of them and took it through the design-thinking process with the help of the KAUST Smart team and TKS teachers. The SDGs covered by the students were:
#6 Clean Water and Sanitation, for which students were asked to think of ways to use less water, highlight a device to save water, or develop an action plan for people to use less water.
#7 Affordable and Clean Energy, for which students had to think of ways to reduce energy use, to transform one common item they used everyday to work using renewable energy, or make people aware about the importance of clean and renewable energy.
#13 Climate Action, in which students were challenged to think of ways to reduce their carbon footprints, think of a device that captures CO2 from the air and reuses it for something or an action plan for people to reduce their carbon footprint in their routines.
#14 Life Below Water, with challenges around how to reduce and remove plastic pollution from our oceans and shorelines as well as how we can fish more sustainably or substitute fish in our diets.
and #17 Partnerships for the Goals where students were asked to live the SDGs and create an exhibition booth to spread the word and inspire people to contribute.
Parents and community members came along to look at the proposed solutions students had created and some of the exciting innovations used within KAUST Smart.
