Our entry for the Transforming our World project was a great success; we were awarded the best newcomer award.
The main message of our project was that even though the UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development are huge global problems it doesn’t mean that we can’t all change small things in our lives or do something simple to solve them. For example, when we looked at goal 1 – no poverty, we first thought of raising money and sending it to Malawi but after researching we discovered that by buying Fairtrade products, and convincing others to do so also, that we could make a much bigger change to the lives of people in developing countries in the long run. Similarly when we looked at goal 3 – Good Health and Well-being, we learned that pneumonia was one of the most problematic diseases in Malawi and that they lack the blood tests and x-rays that we have in Ireland to diagnose it we wondered how we could help. We weren’t in a position to send x-ray equipment or pay for more doctors to go to Malawi but we noticed that both the Malawian doctor and Irish doctor we interviewed mentioned that cooking indoors in smoky conditions made chest problems worse. We realised that we knew enough about how a fire works from our science lessons to design a stove that would solve the problem of smoke; so with a little extra research we created designs that could be used in Malawi.
After doing both of these we noticed a pattern – there were simple solutions that we could do in Ireland to help the lives of people in Malawi and so the title of our project became – ‘Solving Big Problems with Simple Solutions’.
To see the project in detail download the pdfs below:
