Quality education in the service of the community

More than 300 students and one hundred teachers will participate in the program campus from May 4 to 7 Challenge by Educaixa 2022. The meeting, to be held in Barcelona, ​​will serve as a meeting of the twenty winning teams of this annual challenge who will take a study trip to Silicon Valley as recognition of their merit and the opportunity to materialize their proposals. Incubator. To participate in the event, working groups of three or four students, coordinated by their full-time teachers, must first go through a rigorous selection process in which project opportunities can “shake the world.” According to the organizer of the challenge, the organization “la Caixa”.

Become Weldshekers, Participating students – young people from ESO 3rd and 4th, undergraduate and postgraduate training cycles from Spain and Portugal – should present a project that will have a positive impact on the community. For the development of entrepreneurship, media / critical thinking, research and digital skills, the project is divided into four areas that correspond to each of them: Young Entrepreneurs, BeCritical, STEAMxChange and BigData. In this way, the main goal is to promote quality education through reflection, collaborative learning and contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In the latest issue, one of the winning projects was Wormy, an online community designed to explore, share, and recognize good practices and sustainable habits that reflect the spirit of the program: Hiring, ”say its founders. In addition to Wormy, other initiatives from previous editions have been widely recognized.

This is the case of three students at the Gerardo Diego de Pozuelo de Alarcón Institute (Madrid) who discovered something particularly relevant during the difficult months of the pandemic: Covid incidence was higher in areas with low socioeconomic status. For its part, another working group from IES Ramón y Cajal developed in Huesca Applications Beetroot, which serves to facilitate the work of beekeepers and emphasizes the importance of bees.

This year, the 2033 team began working in classrooms from October to March to design their projects. 1252 of them took part in the challenge or, similarly, a total of 4529 students, coordinated by 331 teachers from 297 educational centers in the Iberian Peninsula. Eventually, one hundred teams will participate on campus, and 20 of these will travel to the United States. The final screening serves a selection of 12 final projects to be developed at the EduCaixa NEXT Incubator over the next academic year.

Projects that take a leap and materialize

Maria Espinett is in charge of the education department of the “la Caixa” Foundation and determines tHe’s challenged by EduCaixa As “a unique life and learning experience that includes face-to-face campus, study tour and project incubator at various stages.” Regarding his appointment in Barcelona in May, he explains: “This serves to enable the participating teams to use all the knowledge gained during the course, meet boys and girls from all over the peninsula, develop their projects and practice their communication for the presentation. Initiatives before the jury. ”

The next steps in anticipation of the selected proposals are a trip to the Silicon Valley and the start of the project at the EduCaixa NEXT Incubator. The first will take place from June 28 to July 12 and participants will “live together, collaborate and put their learning into context. It is an unforgettable experience in which they will take part in workshops, dynamics and conferences, but it will also be a place for relaxation and tourism, ”explains Maria Espinette. In his view, “Challenge is a fundamental incentive when it comes to reflecting on action and commitment through initiative and leadership. Students become stronger and become agitators of the world or The wreckage of the universe. “All of this is guided by the fundamental figure of teachers who have exclusive training and enable teams to go that far,” he said.

After the first person experience, it is time to gain the importance of the projects. EduCaixa NEXT is the phase when each team’s proposals leave the school environment and become something real: “It is a space of support and accompaniment from which ideas materialize safely, with guidance, training and trust.” The head of education at the foundation explains that this is done “with specialized and continuous mentoring for one year, with training adapted to the needs and approaches, as well as the support community that goes beyond the project itself.” Precisely, Maria Espinette also emphasizes the role of EduCoaches, who are responsible for accompanying and promoting education, both on the Barcelona campus and during the Silicon Valley travel and incubation phase. They are young people who excel in their professional field, lead initiatives, have previous mentoring experience and, in some cases, were even participants at the time as students in previous publications. Challenge by EduCaixa“, – he concludes.