Designathon Works is a foundation with a mission to empower and unleash children’s creativity to design a better world using new technologies. Our unique Designathon method allows children to invent, build and present their self-devised solutions to a social or environmental issue around the Sustainable Development Goals. It includes access to easy to use scaffolding and teaching materials for ages 4 to 12.

The method leads children to apply their knowledge (in math, biology, physics) as they design innovative solutions around SDGs. Additionally it focuses on inner capacities of all children, regardless their background, race, ability or learning situation, recognizing that each child has something valuable to contribute.
Our mission is achieved by spreading the method and way of thinking to schools, institutes and businesses worldwide.

Current educational systems focus on knowledge transfer for a bygone age and lack the know-how to cultivate technological literacy & creativity. This is where Designathon Works steps in to fill the gap with Designathon method which develops all competency-skills and character quality skills for children called by the OECD: 21st century competencies.
The Designathon method combines aspects of Design Thinking and Maker Education, both approaches which are gaining ground in education systems around the world. It has an underlying pedagogical model inspired by Reggio Emilia, John Dewey’s Child and Curriculum and Seymour Papert’s Learning theory Constructionism.
A designathon is a structured workshop in which children (ages 4-12 years) invent, build and present their self-devised solutions to a social or environmental issue around the Sustainable Development Goals. A workshop lasts four to six hours and is facilitated by education professionals. The experience helps children become future ready through learning to design and use technology such as mini-motors and sensors.

The method was first developed in the Netherlands and tested during the first Global Children’s Designathon in November 2014.

We’ve worked with children from different cultural and educational backgrounds, reaching children in Singapore, Europe, rural India and the slums of Nairobi.
So far 60+ Dutch schools have done our school programs, we’ve trained 300+ teachers and worked with over 3300 Dutch school children.