MCB Business Partners is gearing up to introduce two impactful classroom Sustainnovation Challenges for secondary educators in early 2024.
Originally intended for the South West Sydney Sustainnovation Challenge series in 2023, the challenges—Digital Exclusion and Water Sustainability—unfortunately had to be canceled at the last minute due to COVID-related spikes and teacher availability.
Despite the setback, MCB Business Partners, in collaboration with the NSW Government’s Water and Smart Places teams, who were involved in the original planning of the challenges, will see the challenges come to life not only in South West Sydney classes but many schools across the state, where communities are set to be impacted by water access or affected by digital inequity.
Duncan Burck, Managing Director of MCB Business Partners, the creators of the Sustainnovation Challenge program, said, “The classroom sustainnovation challenges will be curated and resourced for teachers to deliver over four to five lessons. Because of the nature of the topics, being aligned to several mandatory syllabuses in secondary education, there’s scope to complement teachers’ current classroom programming rather than being an extra-curricular experience. We expect many teachers to try the challenge out with their students.”
Duncan continued, “Following a similar format to the two-day challenge, students, once they have delved into the challenge problems, will be assessed on their pitch, which is a response to a set of questions related to the theme they connect with and are passionate about solving.”
Duncan further added, “Despite the challenges we faced in round 1 of these challenges going live with a smaller group of students, we are very enthusiastic about allowing more students to engage with these issues and share their innovative ideas. The commitment from government agencies to evaluate and potentially implement outstanding student proposals is a significant step forward.”
The Expression of Interest (EOI) form is now accessible on the Sustainnovation Challenge website. Schools interested in bringing these challenges to life in their classrooms during Terms 1 and 2 of 2024 are encouraged to register their interest.
Challenges
| Challenge Theme: | Changing behaviours for sustainability |
| Challenge Inquiry Statement: | How can we help people, communities and businesses modify their behaviour towards water usage? |
| Challenge Theme: | Breaking the Digital Divide |
| Challenge Inquiry Statement: | How do we break down the digital divide and digital exclusion in our South-West & Western Sydney Communities? |