Ballarat Social Innovators
Crazy Good Ideas Showcase
In partnership with Integra, Isuzu, and Ballarat Tech School, Crazy Ideas College (CIC) has hosted over 160 students from 7 schools in Ballarat this year to participate in a Social Innovators program.
Over 40 crazy good ideas have been created across themes including fostering community connectedness, reimagining learning, enhancing health and wellbeing, and promoting care for the environment.
CIC has collaborated with over 25 community partners from Ballarat during the program - with many continuing to work alongside the schools and funding partners to bring these ideas to life in the community.
CIC Into Action
The CIC Social Innovators process consists of four phases:
Explore and discover
Generate ideas
Prototype, test and twist
Promote and pitch
Across the two-day program, young people discovered new insights around issues they care about, generated crazy good ideas, prototyped how these ideas could work in the community, and presented compelling pitches that inspired action to a panel of community partners.
Ideas to Life with Integra
In June, Integra welcomed 16 young people from Ballarat Grammar and Mount Rowan Secondary College to their office to participate in an action-packed Ideas2Life workshop with Integra staff. From pitching their ideas to Integra staff, to working alongside different departments in areas of project management, marketing, and innovation, teams came away with a greater understanding of the steps involved to bring their idea to life in the local community.
With guidance, resources, and connections from our diverse community partner pool, we are working to bring ideas to life with teams such as AirBnFree - an app for those with extra resources or an extra bed to offer to those experiencing homelessness or disadvantage, and Game2Life – a game which teaches young people how to navigate life’s challenges to ‘win at life’!
Crazy Good Ideas
Promoting Care for the Environment
The Rubbish Run
By Josh, Beau and Mason (St Patrick’s College)
This team have combined the genius from Pokémon Go with their passion for creating beautiful natural spaces in their idea ‘The Rubbish Run’. Through gamifying rubbish collection, the team hope to incentivise people to clean up their environment. As a smart place to start, this team will host a rubbish clean up competition with Year 9 students at St Patrick’s College with the house that collects the most rubbish enjoying a pizza lunch.
This team have already reached out to Sustainability Victoria and are working improve the school’s status as a ‘Resource Smart School’.
Fun Run for Solar Panels
By Charlie, Nick, Callum & Rory (Phoenix P-12 Community College)
This team wants to promote care for the environment through raising awareness of alternate energy resources, whilst encouraging people to be active.
Through organising a fun run that raises money and awareness for solar panel research, this team wants to combine elements of sustainability and environmentally conscious consumerism, with the act of getting physically healthy.
This team has connected with Sustainability Victoria to organise a fun run for the Ballarat community next term.
Water Wonders
By Finn, George & Taj (St Patrick’s College)
Imagine if all the water from your shower and sink drain could power your house… Meet ‘Water Wonders’.
This team wants to address the issue of water waste, reimagining how households can transform their energy use through hydroelectricity. Their big idea is a drain which converts water into hydroelectricity to be used in the home.
To trial this idea, the team are already working with community partners to create a prototype to test their ideas and learn how it could be scaled for future use.
Plant-A-Pot
By Charlie, Liv, Bess, Cleo, Isaac & Finn (Ballarat Grammar)
Passionate about environmental waste, this team are working to design and create a fully compostable pot that you can plant and leave in the ground. As a smart place to start, the team will have a year group from their school collect all the plastic plant pots from the community as part of their community service project and re-purpose the pots.
This team wants to rid the earth from plastic, one small step at a time. Their vision includes creating a shock-campaign in Bunnings featuring a sculpture made from the plastic pots to demonstrate how much waste is currently produced; creating a biodegradable ‘Plant-A-Pot’ kit for children and families to encourage sustainability from a young age; as well as re-purposing the pots around Ballarat Grammar.
The team have collaborated with Integra’s landscaping managers to explore the steps involved in producing their own biodegradable pot, working through the phases from brainstorming, development, testing, to launch.
Enhancing Health and Wellbeing
Fit Friday
By Zach, William, Tom and Kenzie (Mount Rowan)
Shocked by the statistics that only ½ of all kids get their recommended daily activity, this team are working to get young people active through an awesome school program called ‘Fit Fridays’. To help kids build healthy habits and keep active, this team are partnering with local sporting clubs and organisations to run fun sessions with primary schools across Australia.
Their first ‘Fit Friday’ saw Year 5 and 6 students from Minors Rest Primary School participating in fun football and netball drills with support from Kelly Sports.
This team have also worked with Integra to brainstorm ideas to make community sport more accessible for both young people and adults, such as how to build confidence and encourage engagement with local teams in the Lucas community.
Scent-sation
By Hamish, Riley & Xavier (Ballarat Grammar)
Passionate about health and wellbeing, this team aspire to develop a fork that makes anything you eat taste amazing, so the kale and spinach salad you have every day for lunch can taste just like a burger! To kick off their idea, the team plan to run healthy cooking and nutrition classes at their school to educate students from a young age on the benefits of eating healthy.
With Integra’s marketing expertise, this team developed catchy slogans and campaign ideas to get young people thinking how to ‘pimp their veggies’. They have also brainstormed ways to encourage their school and Lucas community to submit creative recipes and meal ideas to form a fun cookbook for kids and parents.
M.H. Round
By Jacob, Jacob & Mason (St Patrick’s College)
With the conversation around men’s mental health continuing to grow, what better way to engage a bigger audience than with sporting rounds dedicated to conversation.
This team wants to organise a Mental Health round of sport, with orange socks and orange detailing on uniforms to signify solidarity with mental health battles, and spark conversations which express their slogan – ‘It’s not weak to speak’.
This team have already connected with the Western Bulldogs to help bring their idea to life!
Promoting Community Connectedness
Lovely Little Libraries
By Sebastian, Olivia, Mackenzie, James & Blake (Woodmans Hill Secondary College)
The Lovely Little Libraries are a series of resource hubs that the community can visit to get support, such as connections to mental health professionals, food, company, and more.
Some of the libraries are physical spaces (think a typical community library), whilst others are small stress libraries.
To trial this idea, this team will use a space at their school to run an after-school support group for students who would like to join.
Moving Munch
By Olive, Emily, Tilly & Ella (Loreto College)
This team wants to address the amount of food which is wasted, hoping to save leftovers from local businesses to be distributed to those in need, or composted for use in the community gardens.
This big idea is to create an app which connects restaurants and businesses to charities and people in need. This will allow for leftover food to be better distributed or composted.
To trial this idea, the team are looking to partner with a local bakery to collect the leftovers and redistribute to a soup kitchen.
Reimagining Learning
Classroom Connect
By Elena, Rebecca, Eliza & Hannah (Loreto College)
Excelling education around the world.
Meet Classroom Connect, a team passionate about connecting teachers and students from around the world to better engage students in their learning. This team’s big idea is a free online platform to help connect students and teachers and expand their learning horizons. This will have ideas to engage students with different activities, as well as a platform to connect and share resources with other teachers and students globally.
To trial this idea, the team want to collaborate with the education platform ‘Simon’ to conduct a survey and share resources between schools.
Wise Up
By Paddy, Pat, Gary & George (St Patrick’s College)
Old is bold, young is extra fun!
With the effects of social isolation gaining more attention than ever, this team have developed the crazy good idea of ‘Wise Up’ to help foster intergenerational connections.
This team want to create an app that connects you with your ‘superstar’ so that young people can get advice and learn from older people, whilst decreasing feelings of social isolation.
To trial this idea, this team will partner with the Men’s Shed to connect young and older men over a shared experience of building furniture.
“CIC provided the expertise, structure and support we needed to create an authentic, real world learning experience that increased our students’ sense of agency, both as learners and as change-makers. Our world needs more young people with crazy good ideas and CIC understands how to work with schools to make that happen.”
Rachael Williams, Year 9 Learning Leader
“I learnt that I really enjoy creating original ideas and making them happen. Previously, I wasn't aware of my interest in inventing things. Life is so busy with other things a lot of the time, you never get to discover the other strange things that you're passionate about. Finding out that I'm passionate about creating new ideas and concepts for the benefit of those in need made me question what sort of career I may have been thinking about. I absolutely loved this project.“
Year 9 student, Ballarat Grammar