TOP STORY: Uganda Shines at The Future Play Design Challenge Grand Finale

Uganda last week featured and shined at the Future Play Design challenge and made it to this year’s grand final in Denmark.

Represented by Waiswa Ronald Mirondo who was born and raised from the Eastern parts of Uganda a fresh graduate of Civil engineering from Makerere University, the project from Uganda is the only one from Africa representing at this prestigious I.T innovation challenge.

This project from the budding Engineer emerged third among the five projects that made it to the final stage with others coming from different continents namely: Sustain Mini team – Merve Özhan and team from Turkey in the lead, followed by Zero C team – Amit Priyadarshan and team from India, Boat Project team – Waiswa Ronald and team from Uganda came third, and E-children team – Cessi Heredia and team from Spain and Litterbugs team – Gabriella Cammarata and team from U.S came 5^th.

This year’s is “Ethically co-creating the next generation of sustainability & climate play together with children and families” and the purpose of this year’s program is twofold: first to invite startups and entrepreneurs within playful learning around the world, to develop a concept of a play that can help children and families learn about sustainability & climate change issues; and secondly to offer collaborative training for the five selected finalists.

Since the climate is changing, which is a crisis also impacting children’s life and world, according to UNICEF. It is important that children understand this issue and they need to be involved to be prepared now and in the future.

Involving children in the design of play by listening to their voices of what matters can help ensure a positive impact of the product solutions on children’s life, and doing it with an ethical approach can help make the design process more meaningful to children.

The Future play design Challenge is a program which also engages the youth and companies to design and create solutions to engage children into climate change awareness.

Waiswa exhibited his idea dubbed “the Boat project” which is aimed at “Navigating the changing times: – developing culturally rooted, and place-based primary climate literacy curriculum for African children.

According to this fresh Engineer, the project will also motivate and quantify behaviour change towards a sustainable lifestyle by inviting children to learn, play together and play for our future. He further this publication that him tells him and his team make the challenges of climate change relevant and solvable.

Learn more about this Year’s Challenge through this link 2022 Design Challenge.

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