At Innovation Champions’ Club, we believe that creative thinking and critical thinking are necessary life skills that open up alternate thought processes and inspire children to believe that they have the power to make a difference. The power to change people’s lives, starting with their own.
The Innovation Champions’ Club is a programme and an alternative pedagogical platform where children can express their wildest creative ideas in a constructive way. It is a virtual space or a workshop where children are inspired, free to be themselves and to make connections and global networks.
The programme is supported by an app that guides them through their journey towards innovation in the form of live virtual classes and recorded content explaining concepts and presenting them with fun challenges.
From their ideas for fuel alternatives to innovative dog walkers and more, the young innovators will develop and build an exciting innovation portfolio a collection of their ideas recorded in the form of videos and photographs in worksheets that they will share with their fellow clubbers. Screen time is balanced with physical activities like collecting objects and repurposing them to make unique prototypes for their inventions. Importantly they will learn to communicate and express themselves through various mediums poetry, art, design, theatre and more in the course of their journey towards innovation.
Activities our Clubbers love
Craft a Prototype: This physical activity gives material shape to the idea and acts as a thinking tool, helping their ideas evolve as children create and craft their prototypes.
Reframe the Challenge: When children learn to express their own understanding of a challenge, the activity aids the process of comprehension and articulation.
Different Strokes: Each challenge begins with a different activity, be it a poem, drawing or photo journal, to exercise various creative faculties, and find ways to understand the situation and zoom into the problem before arriving at a solution.
Brainstorm: An activity designed for children to push the boundaries and stretch their intellectual capacity by exploring the realm beyond the obvious.
Reflections: An introspective exercise about the child’s journey of innovation an enlightening process that results in self-awareness and confidence.
Questionstorm: Why? What if? Children learn to challenge the status quo by asking questions about the everyday and thinking of alternatives.
ReImagine the Uses: Children learn to reimagine uses of ordinary everyday objects or services for a specific user group.
The Club is the brainchild of its founders Nandita, a management consultant, and Neha, a visual and performing artist. They combine the skills from their varied backgrounds, to bring a unique and relevant programme.
Our purpose, our essence is ‘to ingrain in children the idea of value creation in new and unique ways, going beyond the boundaries of conventional wisdom for them to feel empowered by their capabilities to create a better future for themselves and for the world they inhabit.’
The Club therefore, is not merely a platform that helps kids think innovatively, rewarding them for it, but a crucial tool that helps them develop faculties to face the unique challenges of their future. As they learn to articulate and be self-aware, brainstorm diverse out-of-the-box ideas, challenge the status quo and reimagine the everyday, they will eventually find that problem-solving and identifying opportunities for value creation comes as naturally as eating, sleeping or playing. It will instill in them the fine quality of perseverance and help them gather other skills on their way to becoming experts in the journey of Innovation.
The Club’s emphasis on original and critical thinking, values of empathy, inclusion, social and environmental responsibility, will make it easier for them to assume leadership roles at school, work and in their daily lives now and in the future.