In 2015 the United Nations introduced the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - 17 goals to help tackle some of the world's greatest issues such as poverty, sustainability and climate change. A year later, whilst teaching design in Dubai, Evo introduced a range of projects to his students to inspire them to think big and innovate to help create solutions for the SDGs. This later became Design4SDGs with a mission to promote schools and companies to play a larger role in contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

By using our collective creativity, we believe we can build a better world for future generations. Design4SDGs is now promoting big thinking and innovative ideas on a larger scale to generate new, dynamic solutions for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Back in September last year, we launched the first Design4SDGs Design Challenge for UK schools, in partnership with Bett UK. The challenge was developed to give students more exposure to the UN SDGs, as well as encouraging them to come up with big ideas on ways to make a positive impact on the planet they will ultimately inherit.

The teams were asked to choose 1 of 3 SDG challenges we created, come up with a solution and record a pitch video outlining their idea. These videos were then scored out of a possible 80 points, with the top 4 from each challenge making it to the finals, hosted live at Bett. The standard of the pitch videos was unbelievably high, with a lot of research and thought going into each solution.

On Friday 31st March, the live finals took place on the Arena stage in the ExCeL, London - by far the biggest stage at Bett. All of the finalists did themselves and their schools proud, presenting the potential positive impact of their designs in front of a large audience, as well as a panel of judges. Seeing such passion for the SDGs was an absolute inspiration. The finalists were scored out of 20, which was then added to their original score to give a total out of 100.

We had 1 winner for each challenge, with a special award to recognise a school that embraced the challenge across all SDGs at a high standard. It was clear, however, that all of our finalists were winners on the day - the feedback we received was extremely positive, with teachers commenting on how empowering the experience was for their students.

The Design4SDGs initiative has caught the attention of schools across the globe, and as a result we have just finished our first Global Design Challenge for Earth Day 2023. We had participants from all over the world, including Spain, the United Arab Emirates, USA, Uzbekistan and Canada, as well as many UK schools.

We are also showcasing our students’ innovation on 28th April during the DigCit Institute Global Student Showcase Webinar Series, invited to visit schools in India to inspire students to use their ideas for the SDGs, and will be delivering teacher workshops at ISTE 24 in Philadelphia to help promote our mission in classrooms across the US. 

We will be launching the next Design4SDGs challenge very soon - you can find out more on our Instagram feed, instagram.com/design4sdgs.