Press release -
Strawbees signs Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) for Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.
Strawbees, an award-winning Swedish Edtech brand focusing on educational products for classrooms, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) for Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela under the framework of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The 21st-Century Classroom Experiences is a set starting with 4 different kits created with the SDGs in mind and provides lesson plans for covering math, science, engineering and art subjects to ensure a strong curricular relevance. Each set has activities aligned with the UN SDGs and with the PISA Global Competence framework. A full 21CCE set is designed for one student, but as they progress through the lessons they combine their kits with other students’ to collaboratively accomplish difficult challenges together for sustainability. The 21CCE provides a hands-on learning experience starting in construction and design but also focuses on developing social and emotional soft skills while learning creativity, collaboration and communication.
In May 2019 Chief Creative Officer, Erik Thorstensson and Director of Education and Content, Lindsay Balfour, travelled to the biggest book fair in South America called Feria de Libros in Bogotá, Colombia. They successfully lead over 10 workshops to school groups and drop-in visitors for 3 days reaching 400 students using the 21CC in the UNIC’s booth, also made entirely from cardboard and upcycled materials.
Strawbees’ affordable yet accessible, skills targets around the world to combine creativity and technology, preparing them for a modern world where computer programming and creative problem solving will be a fundamental skill for the future job market.
Cultivating 'Invention Literacy' among students, teachers and education stakeholders globally, Strawbees is currently empowering teachers in 40,000 schools in 50 countries offering a creative, applied and fun-filled experience integrating technology and innovation in learning environments.
‘We are delighted with this UN agreement, that understands the value of our products when it comes to reducing the knowledge gap in the world, and as an effect reducing the equality gap,’ says Erik Bergelin, CEO of Strawbees.
“Communication is action and working with entities such as Strawbees who focus on educational tools to communicate sustainable thinking and living is exactly what we are after. Our goal at UNIC Bogotá is to set up partnerships and programs which not only enable us to get our messages through but transform the messages into real long-lasting societal change. That is also why one of our main audiences is children and youth and making sure they are empowered and given the tools to incorporate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in their own daily lives.” says Helene Papper, Director of UNIC for Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.
Notes to Editors
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
Picture above: Erik Thorstensson, Chief Creative Officer, giving a lesson on the tetrahedron.
Picture above: Lindsay Balfour, Director of Education and Content helping to build with Strawbees kits
Picture above: Students building with Strawbees and sitting on SDGs cubes.
Picture above: Result - giant tetrahedron
Related links
Topics
- Design
Categories
- edtech
- bogota
- columbia
- ghana
- unic
- unis
- mou
- sdgs
- 21cce
- erik thorstensson
- lindsay balfour
- invention literacy
- sdgschangemakers
Kicking off 2014
Strawbees, a Swedish Edtech company, was launched by an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2014 - the people have spoken and the educator community was waiting for a product like this to come along.
Brand mission
Since then Strawbees transformed into a fast pace company delivering inspiring educational tools called the 21st Century Classroom Experiences. Their mission is simple: 'We want to inspire children to think creatively and out-of-the-box when it comes to visualizing and realizing ideas - think the next generation of creative problem solvers. We want a classroom of 30 pupils to come up with their very own unique solutions. Not to memorize things, but to actually understand and draw conclusions on their own actions, especially in a world of 'fake news' it is a key skill to be critical, question and go back to the source. Read something, test something, make something', says Erik Thorstensson, the inventor behind Strawbees.
The story
The initial idea started when Erik Thorstensson bought a lampshade from IKEA, the Swedish flat-pack furniture company. At that time he studied mechanical engineering and environmental sciences. He realized the production tools used for this lampshade generated a big amount of waste not utilized. Erik T. got to work and started to build different prototypes with this plastic waste and commissioned the very same factory to run a production utilizing IKEA's waste material. The result was Strawbees’ very first upcycled product!
Schools and UNIS
Strawbees appeared on the market at a time when schools were in a strong need for a big change, think about it. In a world where our cars have changed, our phones have changed and our payment systems have changed - why would our schools not change too? 'I like to think of our Strawbees’ education system like a 'Trojan Mouse' getting the foot in the door, our product is easy enough for pupils to build their confidence and not get frustrated but the possibilities are infinite and exactly that is the beauty of it!’ says Erik T. Any teacher anywhere in the world can use it as a base for student-driven learning. So much so that Strawbees has linked up with the UNIS (United Nations International School) having designed prototype kits and since then have run successful workshops in Ghana and Colombia years later.
Strawbees Educational System
Strawbees education system consists of affordable school kits, which cater to 30 pupils. This contains materials for construction, open-ended challenges in lesson plans, video tutorials, tools for programming (to build robots!) and most of all encourage experimentation - making by hand, learning by doing, trial and error on and offline. “The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge." Seymour Papert. The ultimate goal is to help foster students of all ages develop problem-solving skills for the demands and rise of technology of the 21st century. “In a society characterized by uncertainty and rapid change, the ability to think creatively is becoming the key to success and satisfaction, both professionally and personally. For today’s children, nothing is more important than learning to think creatively – learning to come up with innovative solutions to unexpected situations that will continually arise in their lives.” - Mitch Resnick, MIT Media Lab.
Community
Strawbees won't stop there. They work with a growing number of educators around the world, putting new lesson plans together, creating video tutorials and running workshops worldwide to expand their offer to create fun, creative and out-of-the-box learning tools for teachers, parents, and makers.
“The Strawbees solution empowers students to unleash creativity and an intuitive and fun approach to programming that works for all ages.”- Paola Mattioli, STEM educator, Rome, Italy
Accolades
Over the years Strawbees has collaborated and run workshops with the top in the industry including Spotify, Universeum in Sweden, Exploratorium in San Francisco, MIT Media Lab in Boston and Sweden’s National Museum of Science and Technology and many more exciting projects in the pipeline. Strawbees is stocked in over 50 countries and collaborates with over 40,000 schools globally. Erik Bergelin, co-founder, CEO and the driving force behind several successful fundraising rounds says: ‘Strawbees is a growth company, the demand is there, now we just need to deliver. With a newly elected top advisory board, exciting products in the pipeline and a clear focus on the education sector, Strawbees has huge potential to be a globally respected education product.’
Strawbees has won many awards, including the Year of the Maker 2014, Nordic EdTech Awards 2018 and just been nominated for the Norrsken Impact Award 2019.
Inspiring the next generation of inventors - join Strawbees' classroom!
