The Innovate Curriculum just won another award!
Two prestigious accolades for a small, upstart company that wants to change the world
This week, the Ed Institute, a Canberra-founded start-up, won multiple accolades at the 2021 Australian Good Design Awards.
The Good Design Awards are the highest honour for design and innovation in the country and reward projects from around the world, across 12 design disciplines and 30 subcategories.
The awards were for the Ed Institute’s Innovate Curriculum, developed in partnership with the ACT Government in early 2021. The Curriculum teaches school students how to lead and innovate for a more sustainable future. Young learners get hands-on, tackling climate change issues at their local school community level, while learning skills that can they can also apply to the larger global challenge as future leaders.
The Curriculum received a prestigious Best In Class Award for the design of education services, and a Good Design Award Winner accolade in the Social Impact category, all from the country’s oldest and most prestigious international awards for design and innovation.
The judging panel were enthusiastic in their praise of the Innovate Curriculum, noting that “By teaching young people how to use design thinking and systems-level innovation to tackle societal issues, like sustainability, it accelerates their role as tomorrow’s leaders, change makers and disruptors. Amazing to think that this tool has made it into our school system and the positive impact it will have on helping to embed design at the core of our education system.”
Responding to the announcement, Darren Menachemson, Chief Impact Officer of the Ed Institute and one of its co-founders, said, “Young people are natural innovators – they blow us away with their passion and creativity. We designed the curriculum to give school students powerful skills that are in use right now by the UN and Silicon Valley companies alike. We want to prepare them to make a difference as future leaders – whether as scientists, policymakers or entrepreneurs.”
Ian Thomson, Chief Curriculum Officer, added, “It was a privilege to co-design the curriculum with the ACT Government. They are enthusiastic partners in challenging the status quo to drive fresh thinking in the area of sustainability, and care deeply about how education can get next generation to play a leadership role in making the world a better place, starting here in Canberra.”
A track record of impact, at home and abroad
The curriculum built on previous school age learning resources created by the Ed Institute, which have been taught to young people in Australia and the USA. One implementation of the curriculum was rolled out to disadvantaged communities in California in 2019 and was subsequently evaluated by the prestigious US-based think tank, the Aspen Institute, in 2020.
The Aspen Institute, in its public report, noted that noted that “participating young people gained “deeper engagement in education and programs; more secure attachment to jobs and future-planning; an increased sense of self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-efficacy”, and that it “led to widespread effects in how partners engage in the community beyond their work with youth [by having] built and strengthened their capacity to identify community needs and co-design solutions”.
A spin-out of one of Canberra’s most successful companies
The Ed Institute’s Chief Strategy Officer and former school principal, Ben Hall, said that “The Ed Institute is a bit of an upstart company with a wildly ambitious vision. Our mission is to empower the next generation to tackle societies’ biggest problems, by giving them the skills needed to be leaders in a world that is being reshaped by the 4th industrial revolution.”
The company was founded in Canberra, Australia as a spin-out of school-focused education services developed by Australia’s most innovative design for public good firm, ThinkPlace. ThinkPlace, also founded in Canberra, has offices around the world and works on public good projects with governments, intergovernmental organisations like the United Nations, and eminent institutions like Johns Hopkins University and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to name a few.