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Design-a-thon Works - Empowering Children to Design a Better World. A conversation with Emer Beamer.
‘What if we radically re-imagined the way we see children? What if we saw them as changemakers, engaged humans, scientists or inventors, and then helped them to develop their abilities for these roles’ – Emer Beamer, Co-founder and Program Lead of Design-a-thon Works.
Emer Beamer, social entrepreneur and designer, inspired by children’s imaginations and altruism founded Design-a-thon Works in 2004. She is also an Ashoka Fellow and has co-founded both Butterfly Works, Co-Creation for a Better World and NairoBits, her first social enterprise (founded in 2000), Design College for youth from slum areas, Nairobi, Kenya, co-creating social change. What began as an art project is now a family of schools in 5 African countries with some 10,000 graduates securing jobs in the formal tech sector in Kenya and beyond. Nairobits is still going strong.
The aim of Design-a-thon is to empower children globally to design a better world and to have society in turn include children in co-designing the future.
Emer was elected as an Ashoka Fellow in 2016, and awarded ‘Global Innovator’ of Dubai Expo 2020. eLearning programs which she co-designed such as 'The World starts with Me' (Uganda 2004) and 'Learning about Living' (Nigeria 2007) are regularly adapted for 15 new countries in Africa and Asia and have won prizes from the World Bank and the United Nations. The connecting principle in her work is empowering learners by supporting them to become the author, creator and maker of their own worlds.
She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from University College Dublin (Ireland) and then studied Graphic and Interactive Design at the Rietveld Academy in the Netherlands.
Emer is originally from Ireland but has been based in Amsterdam longer than she likes to admit, she is married with two teenage daughters.
If you have any specific questions for Emer, you can contact her at [email protected]
If you’d like to find out more about Design-a-thon Works, you can do so at the following links:
Global Children's Designathon, a yearly event, The 2021 video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzG73QrnBkk
Video from RTE of the first Global Children's Designathon, held in 5 cities including Dublin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iks-v2nmkrI
Design-a-thon Works
https://www.designathonworks.com
Butterfly works
http://www.butterflyworks.org
NairoBits
http://www.nairobits.com
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By Siobhan Fitzgerald‘What if we radically re-imagined the way we see children? What if we saw them as changemakers, engaged humans, scientists or inventors, and then helped them to develop their abilities for these roles’ – Emer Beamer, Co-founder and Program Lead of Design-a-thon Works.
Emer Beamer, social entrepreneur and designer, inspired by children’s imaginations and altruism founded Design-a-thon Works in 2004. She is also an Ashoka Fellow and has co-founded both Butterfly Works, Co-Creation for a Better World and NairoBits, her first social enterprise (founded in 2000), Design College for youth from slum areas, Nairobi, Kenya, co-creating social change. What began as an art project is now a family of schools in 5 African countries with some 10,000 graduates securing jobs in the formal tech sector in Kenya and beyond. Nairobits is still going strong.
The aim of Design-a-thon is to empower children globally to design a better world and to have society in turn include children in co-designing the future.
Emer was elected as an Ashoka Fellow in 2016, and awarded ‘Global Innovator’ of Dubai Expo 2020. eLearning programs which she co-designed such as 'The World starts with Me' (Uganda 2004) and 'Learning about Living' (Nigeria 2007) are regularly adapted for 15 new countries in Africa and Asia and have won prizes from the World Bank and the United Nations. The connecting principle in her work is empowering learners by supporting them to become the author, creator and maker of their own worlds.
She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from University College Dublin (Ireland) and then studied Graphic and Interactive Design at the Rietveld Academy in the Netherlands.
Emer is originally from Ireland but has been based in Amsterdam longer than she likes to admit, she is married with two teenage daughters.
If you have any specific questions for Emer, you can contact her at [email protected]
If you’d like to find out more about Design-a-thon Works, you can do so at the following links:
Global Children's Designathon, a yearly event, The 2021 video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzG73QrnBkk
Video from RTE of the first Global Children's Designathon, held in 5 cities including Dublin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iks-v2nmkrI
Design-a-thon Works
https://www.designathonworks.com
Butterfly works
http://www.butterflyworks.org
NairoBits
http://www.nairobits.com