Amsterdam, June 2020

 

Our mission is to unleash the creativity of 1 million children worldwide and to teach them to become changemakers for a better future. We do this through design-hackathons where children find and prototype solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals such as water shortage, food waste and climate change. 

We believe our responsibility as an organisation does not stop there; we should set an example by ‘walking the talk’ and being committed to integrating sustainable practices systemically throughout the entire organisation. We want to limit our environmental impact as much as possible, and are therefore always looking for ways to improve our policy and practices further. We are open to learn, which means seeking to improve the current status quo: in terms of technology, creative ideas, changemaking and environmental impact. Please find an explanation of how we do this below.
 

Sustainable practices by staff and partners

• We empower our team and the people we work with to be a changemaker in whichever way they feel is best. We encourage them to play a role in social, economic and environmental challenges whether it is through educational programs, taking personal actions or another route. 

• During working hours, we promote an environmentally friendly work culture and sustainable practices to employees through for example providing a vega(n) lunch. We also ensure our employees are aware of the sustainability policy of Designathon Works.

• We promote/spread the word about the pressing nature of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations by integrating these in all our lesson materials. By doing so, the younger generation becomes more aware of local and worldwide environmental and social problems.

• We advocate for children to have a prominent place during discussions on global problems and wish to inspire other organisations in education how to provide creative, future-oriented education with a focus on finding solutions to real-world problems. We aim to create the most active agents of change by encouraging children, teachers and organisations to make the world a better place in whatever shape or form they feel best and to have the courage to play a big part in it. 

• We encourage and advise all our network partners to adopt sustainable practices for their designathon events.

 

Work travel

• We stimulate our employees to use bikes and public transport for work-related travelling.

• We largely plan our international meetings through Zoom and are always looking for alternatives to travelling. If this is however not possible and flying out is necessary, we compensate for our CO2 emissions.

 

Use of natural resources in our work

• We encourage digital working over printing, hereby limiting the amount of paper we use. However, if it is necessary to print, we use 100% recycled paper only. 

• We think about everything we buy carefully and try to use recycled making materials for our designathons as much as possible. 

• When handing out prizes/thank-you gifts, we make sure they are environmentally friendly and/or stimulate sustainable practices of the receiver.

• We aim to minimise our waste. If there are left-overs from our designathons, we first look for ways to recycle it. When throwing out waste, we make sure to separate this carefully.

• Energy and water are important natural resources. Since we are leasing the place we have our office in, we have no control over the energy-provider or isolation of the building. Still, we limit our own usage by using as little water and energy as possible. 

 

Areas of improvement 

• Our maker kit which the children use to make prototypes is currently not fully sustainable. While most elements are durable and of simple materials we do include acid batteries for the motors and are looking for an alternative to these. We encourage all our partners to reuse all elements and  minimise the amount of abundant materials in the maker kit through video tutorials.  We aim to create a fully sustainable maker kit by 2022. If you believe that you can help us realise this, please reach out to us through info@designathon.nl. 

• In 2021, we are planning on using sustainable packaging only (for example for sending our maker kits to other countries). We encourage our partners to supply the maker kit parts locally when possible. If not, we are making the shipment from our headquarters in The Netherlands. The packaging is made out of 70% recycled material, FSC certified. The filling is 100% biodegradable. 

 

Questions or suggestions? 
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our Sustainability Policy, please feel free to contact us through info@designathon.nl.