2023 AWARD WINNER
Beginner Awards: Social impact
IVAN, international volunteering association network
Solution summary
IVAN is a social network that connects and engages all members of the school community and encourages active participation in volunteering activities focused on sustainability and innovation. It encompasses the classroom but extends beyond it by fostering lifelong learning skills and critical sensibility to eco-sustainable actions.
This social network has the objective of encouraging students to develop a sense of community and purpose, thus driving meaningful change, by proposing challenges and earning achievements, certificates, school credits and a competition rewarding the more environmentally-friendly schools.
What sets IVAN apart is its scalability and transferability: from schools to businesses or public organisations, this social network’s model can be adapted to any context, promoting eco-sustainability across diverse communities.
Read the full description below.
Solution details
We have created a social network to encourage participation in volunteering activities on sustanability and innovation. All members of the school community and ecosystem are involved.
Do you want to know more about our idea and the work we have done during the hackthon? Have a look at this Miro Board: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVNVz68yU=/
Are you curious about our pitch? Watch it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XTII--atLiVZtHU-8dhb4v-_rUZeSmKk/view?usp=drive_link
The iTEENER team, comprising five fourth-year students from Trinchese High School in Martano (Lecce, Italy), has collaborated for some time discovering personal strengths and limitations. This synergy led to winning an award at the Weave Innovation Camp in Melpignano and reaching the final of the Italian entrepreneurship championship at Bocconi University in Milan. Our journey doesn't end here!
Meet the Team:
- Giulio Trisolino, CEO: Oversees project coordination, manages interpersonal relations, and guides team members.
- Carlotta Capone, Financial Director: Handles fundraising initiatives.
- Saemi De Rinaldis, Social Media Manager: Manages communication and community engagement.
- Jaida Gallo, Marketing Director: Responsible for attracting new investors and developing advertising campaigns.
- Ailine Petrachi, General Manager: Monitors and evaluates the team's overall performance.
Tweet / Slogan
Leave a mark: start from your own! Join us: become a GREENTEENER!
iTEENER
Resources
You can find below the link to our website and in attachment a document explaining the meaning of the name of our solution, some fun facts about our mascot, the dynamics about the year-end event, and some challenges for the future.
IVAN website: https://ivaniteener.wixsite.com/ivan
Context
The reason why we thought it would be right to build our social network IVAN was the awareness of the problems which are currently affecting the generation Z and the schools:
- Lack of sensitivity to environmental issues;
- Absence of an organization that can follow step-by-step the schools approaching the eco-sustainability issues and bring them closer to others more active on the topic.
As a result of this growing awareness, we have built a social platform and network, named IVAN, that connects not only students but also each member of the school community, all having the goal of becoming environmentally conscious citizens.
To encourage cooperation among all the participants we have also thought of issuing attendance certificates to the students, awarding school credits, and, last but not least, organising a final event that will reward more environmentally-friendly schools.
Who Benefits?
All those belonging to the school community will benefit from our social network: not only students and teachers but also students' parents and school employees. They will have the opportunity to take a particularly attentive attitude to environmental issues through challenges proposed by us and carried out by them voluntarily.
The students will be the protagonists of the ecological transition of their schools on several levels: starting from meetings with experts they will become promoters themselves of sustainable thinking and will spread it at home and elsewhere, including in their future working environment.
The main goal of our project is to enable generation Z guys to live their life in a view of respect towards our planet, as they are citizens of a world in need of a change.
Teachers and school employees will benefit from the project too. They will attend refresher courses on the topic so they can better support the students in this path.
Impact
We expect IVAN to have a major social impact on Generation Z.
The awareness of the need for sustainability, that starts in childhood and continues throughout the years of schooling, can change daily habits completely.
If the students follow our path and carry out our challenges over the year with their companions, they will develop critical sensibility. They will gradually do it as a part of a community, by learning to work together and fight against ignorance that harasses both the new and old generations.
The effect our project will have will be visible in the social network. If you look at profile of S. Trinchese School you can see a section with the achievements earned by the school. As the challenges are completed, a bar will turn green to indicate how many objectives a school has accomplished during the year as well as the quality of carbon dioxide saved. Moreover, to recognize the work of the school we will make some plates and give them to the school committed to completing the challenges.
Team work
The iTEENER team, comprising five fourth-year students from Trinchese High School in Martano (Lecce, Italy), has collaborated for some time discovering personal strengths and limitations. This synergy led to winning an award at the Weave Innovation Camp in Melpignano and reaching the final of the Italian entrepreneurship championship at Bocconi University in Milan. Our journey doesn't end here!
Meet the Team:
- Giulio Trisolino, CEO: Oversees project coordination, manages interpersonal relations, and guides team members.
- Carlotta Capone, Financial Director: Handles fundraising initiatives.
- Saemi De Rinaldis, Social Media Manager: Manages communication and community engagement.
- Jaida Gallo, Marketing Director: Responsible for attracting new investors and developing advertising campaigns.
- Ailine Petrachi, General Manager: Monitors and evaluates the team's overall performance.
Innovativeness
Thanks to IVAN we will be able to build a network that connects all the schools attentive to the issue of eco-sustainability in a community.
What is new is that we will closely monitor all the schools willing to be part of our project, supporting them with a tutor who will guide them and manage their green transition, into GREENTEENER.
Furthermore, the other innovation of our project is to involve all the members of the school community, in the challenges we propose as well as IVAN’s ability to share environmental issues not only with Italian schools but to extend them to the European and international ones.
We also highlight the importance of the competences the students gain when they work together with their peers and companions since they do not act as single individuals, but as valuable part of a group who is raising people’s awareness and mobilizing them for the environment.
Transferability
Our solution may be applied in different contexts, as it offers voluntary activities that can potentially be carried out outside the school, including other members of society. IVAN can therefore be extended from school to any other educational institution and to all public and private bodies.
Many businesses are promoting an eco-sustainable transition of their acvitities so, potentially, IVAN can be a support for all the organisations willing to work on this topic, including by supporting companies with experts who give seminars on the issue and guide them step by step. Obviously, the challenges proposed will be carefully selected to suit the sector in which these companies operate, being the final goal carbon dioxide reduction.
In this way, the employees of any company, as well as students, will be sensitized to the issues of sustainability through specific activities and will be on their turn oriented towards greater care for the environment.
Sustainability
Our social network is environmentally and economically sustainable:
- - Environmentally because it promotes environmental awareness thought educational conferences on the issue. This aspect takes shape by launching different challenges aimed at environmental protection. Same of these challenges are plogging, a combination of jogging with picking up litter, collected in composters that will process it in fertilizer used in the school garden, in a circular recycling perspective.
- - Economically because thanks to the work of the volunteers who collaborate with IVAN it will be possible to implement an awareness campaign.
Despite this, we are aware that funding is necessary in order to reimburse the experts participating in seminars, to buy equipment needed, such as composters, and to organize the end-of-year event that includes money winnings. For these reasons we have decided to launch our fundraising campaign that will allow us to turn IVAN into reality.