Designathon Works

Future Ready Education For A Better World

In the coming years we can expect great changes in all aspects of our lives due to new developments in genetics, robotics, nanotechnology and further development in information technology. Worldwide there are 2 billion children of school going age. How can we prepare them to prosper in a rapidly changing, increasingly technological and complex world? How can they learn to design a better world for themselves and the planet? Armed with these urgent questions, 15 years experience in designing education programs in widely diverse contexts from Afghanistan to the Netherlands, plus a belief that all children can contribute to designing a better world, we at Designathon Works are working to meet this challenge by developing and spreading our unique Designathon method and way of thinking in classrooms, after school programs, tailor made workshops and education challenges.

This future ready method allows children to invent, build and present their self-devised solutions to a social or environmental issue around the Sustainable Development Goals. It includes access to easy to use scaffolding and teaching materials for ages 4 to 12. The method leads children to apply their knowledge (in math, biology, physics) and develop the set of skills they need to participate fully in our rapidly changing societies and benefit from technology as they design innovative solutions for a better future. Additionally it focuses on inner capacities of all children, regardless their background, race, ability or learning situation, recognizing that each child has something valuable to contribute.

We work together with schools, organizations and businesses worldwide.
Our efforts culminate in the annual Global Children's Designathon. During this one-day event, children in the cities worldwide come together to work in parallel and design innovative concepts for one of the SDGs. This year's theme is SDG #15: Life on Land.

We are located in the Netherlands, Dubai, South Africa, Canada, India, Croatia, Serbia, Poland and Spain. And we host our annual event in more then 20 cities, on all the continents worldwide.