DBIS has been associated with Eumind for over a year now. Eumind is a non-profit school network that creates and supervises virtual exchange projects in which Indian and European students work together on real-life issues such as sustainability, human rights and arts and culture. European schools are matched with a suitable Indian school and ensure a direct line of communication. This process truly empowers them to be global citizens as they understand cultural diversity in a more in-depth manner and build respect for people and environment all around them.

The Strenna of 2020-21 as presented by the Salesian Society of Don Bosco was ‘Good Human Beings and Upright Citizens’. This was set into practice by the students of DBIS on the global platform in the Eumind Exchange Programme – Values 2020. When the entire world was hit hard by the pandemic and values were on the threshold of stagnation from society, students of Don Bosco International Schools worked on the project ‘Values 2020’ , which was the need of the hour.

The Eumind platform allows students to explore these value systems with their European partner school situated in the South Holland province of Netherlands named ‘The Helinium High School’. Our countries are culturally diverse yet share a similar and distinct set of values which were surveyed through areas of ‘Women empowerment’, ‘Multi-cultural school’, ‘Student-teacher relations’, ‘Celebrations’ and ‘Friendship’. using their own cultural background as their basis. With the main focus being exploration of values in our home country, students interviewed various people to answer their research questions and write a report based on their findings. A written reflection and comparison report were part of this project – Values 2020.

The pandemic made life harder to coordinate freely but the online interactions via Zoom and Discord* made learning a blessing to successfully explore this cultural diversity despite the distance. Eumind recommended weebly.com, an easy-to-use website. Our student participants in collaboration with the ICT department created a website to showcase their valuable research work. https://eumindvalues2020dbos.weebly.com

*Kindly note Zoom and Discord were used only after taking parent consent and under the supervision of the school management and cyber security rules.

All the five groups worked under the timely guidance of their mentors Ms Hemangini Gupta and Mr Vaibhav Chinchalkar and received certificates of excellence after completing their research. The research was assessed under a three tier system – the self-evaluation by students, evaluation by Teacher-Mentor and the International Panel of Eumind. Out of 46 schools of India, Don Bosco International School’s project was appreciated and looking at the quality research by students, the Director of Eumind Mr Ludo Mateusen recommended Don Bosco International School to take up a new challenge in the 2021-22 Eumind Project, namely “Creative Entrepreneurship”.

Every year 25 children participate and contribute their ideas towards a chosen theme of environment, values etc. This year DBIS has had the privilege to work with the chairperson of Eumind Mr Ludo Mateusen and Ms. Noa de Zeeuw on a pilot project involving ‘Creative Entrepreneurship’. With the start- up segment being red hot in India currently, our students grabbed this opportunity with open arms to channelize their inner Elon Musks and Steve Jobs.

The thought of creating a sustainable product or innovating an idea that could change the landscape of the business world or disrupt an existing system by itself is very exciting. Our students went through a multi-layered process of brainstorming with their mentors and heads where they came up with products they wanted to create. A myriad of ideas ranging from AI to solar paint that could act as a source of renewable energy to an app that could collate the transport problem within the commercial capital of India, to finding alternate uses of stone paper for gifting and sustainable school- books for rural regions to taking up a recycling project that could support their school, cutting costs by utilizing cardboard waste, making note books thus helping the school take these small initiatives to make it a more sustainable one to even creating a trekking bag out of plastic – a segment yet unexplored could help explore their own passion.

This process in itself sharpens their mind as they decipher various options to study feasibility of these ideas as some may be too expensive while some look good on paper and some truly hard to implement because of social and economic factors. This year our students will deep dive into ‘Design Thinking’ a process often used by multinationals like Apple, Samsung, Google and more which helps to solve problems (environmental, human, social etc) in a quick and creative manner.

Once their idea for a product/ service is finalized they brainstorm their thoughts with the partner school in Europe or Netherlands. This helps them empathize with the problems faced by their counterpart and helps them offer effective solutions where this has been successfully tackled in their own country and vice versa. This also helps students analyse the problems based on country size, target population, economic growth, manufactured products and sources of income and incorporation of environmental standards and policies to tackle climate change- a much needed requirement of the future.

Empathising with an existing problem leads to defining what can be done to solve it which helps our students to brainstorm and finally create a prototype to check if the process is actually worthy of implementation. This may sound tedious but this is what ‘Design thinking’ is all about as it forces students to reanalyse, modify and improvise their own prototypes to suit their target audience and yet be profitable.

At every stage in this process, exchange of ideas with the partner school via video conference or other digital channels boosts their confidence or helps them delve deeper into a research that can help them resolve the issue in their home country
https://eumindvalues2021dbos.weebly.com

In conclusion, as Steve Jobs once said “Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.” and this is exactly what we want our young minds to acknowledge that it is not the destination but the journey that teaches you more about life – well in this case their products. Through design thinking, ideation of a concept is clear but the obstacles in the form of social, economic challenges help them question their own learnings. This process may be emotionally draining for some entrepreneurs, since as humans we are always attached to the outcome just like or young students fiercely defend their ideas but the failure and multiple reworking’s help them emerge stronger and sharper to take on bigger challenges and equip them to handle a more technologically advanced world blended with a good dose of social responsibility and sustenance thus empowering them to be truly global change makers. The constant exchange of ideas and information and suggestions among the partner schools is what truly makes Eumind the best initiative to converge the cultural divide through learning and innovation.

Two years into this project and Eumind has already made us appreciate and welcome cultural changes that form the very basis of a globally growing world which has shrunk due to student travel, tourism and global trade.Thus acknowledging the fact that this change will lead our young global changemakers to a good ‘Exchange’ of knowledge that will empower them to look at a sustainable future, but we sincerely hope that it will happen in person from next year as our students travel to Netherlands to meet their friends and vice versa as part of the Eumind exchange program.