On-boarding challenge with the fire department Amsterdam-Amstelland

The Digital Society School started a two-day challenge at the beginning of September in cooperation with the Amsterdam-Amstelland Fire Department and 40 international trainees. Five challenges, ten groups and over ten nationalities. The photo below shows the team that best convinced the jury of their solution to make the fire department team more diverse and inclusive.

About the solution

“We were tasked with the challenge to come up with a conversational object that would try and solve the problem of lack of diversity and inclusion in the fire department in Amsterdam.
For this Sprint, we had in mind that the process is more important than the solution itself. Hence; teamwork, collaboration, and accurate breakdown of the problem with the design tool were the makeup of our process.

 

The team members, Ruth, Sahil, Femi, and Ilara all worked for hand in hand to reach this goal. We took a different approach to the problem by brainstorming the best course of action to reach our goal. Afterward, we broke down the problem into several steps and each of us brought insights on how to tackle the problem. We discussed the idea and decided on the conversational object.
Femi and Ruth did a draft of the conversational object, while Ilara and Sahil designed THE prototype for the team. All in all, it was a beautiful experience, we enjoyed working together as a team and learned valuable lessons for a lifetime.
Thanks to DSS and the Fire department for such a great opportunity.

The Comic Story:

Message

Communicating messages from mediums
that comment positively on controversial
topics in the society that relate with the
minorities and make them feel important
in the country.

Four characters

Different personalities and powers
Daily situation as firefighters”

After the first day and two sprints of hard work, the Fire department invited all trainees to their station for a quick tour and a BBQ!!

The challenge was part of the DSS on-boarding programme and a preview of the upcoming Global Goals Jam on Thursday, September 15th. The two-day event where worldwide multidisciplinary teams work on solving local challenges with the help of design-thinking. This time organised and led by passionate student assistants of GO HvA (Green Office).

Interested? Find out more about the DSS and our courses linked to the Sustainable Development Goals via our monthly newsletter.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), otherwise known as the Global Goals, are an universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.