We are delighted to share a blog written by Juliana Mira Velez, a student at The Columbus School who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2019-20 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 957 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
The chances to make a change are infinite.
Project Overview
Our project is targeting the clean energy department, we want to make a prototype that creates clean and renewable energy. Our prototype consists of making platform that generates energy by the force exerted on it, whether it is when someone walks on it or when a car drives over it. When the platform goes up and down whenever there is pressure on it, it will create the energy which will most likely be supplied to a light post on the street or to stop light.
We plan to do it first small scale that could work with people and then implement them in highways, or normal streets around the city. This could be in a sidewalk and it could be used to power a light post right next to the device. We had inspiration on an already existing project on China and we wanted to create it here in Colombia to inspire change and to spread environmental care.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5jkMgXBcS2/
Our Journey
Some really important skills we have learned are teamwork and fair work distribution. We have also played to our strengths and chose the team members and jobs accordingly. We chose the person who had the most experience leading as the leader and so forth. The fair work distribution is the most important skill we have learned during this project since we already had teamwork pretty much mastered. Whenever we had a long assignment regarding this project we split it up into equal amounts and helped each other whenever we could.
We have learned that we can make a change in the world even if it is a little one like an idea or a design. And that everyone’s opinion and point of view counts. The biggest challenge we have faced is making a design that was fit for a car. We don’t have a lot of engineering expertise so it was really difficult, but since the idea would still be the same for the weight of a person, we have decided to change it to a smaller scale energy generator.
The Next Chapter
Our project took a really unexpected turn due to the fact that we started with a really ambitious idea. After having a conference call with one of the GSL advisors we realized that we should focus our project to work with human weight, not cars. This will eventually help us discover if the prototype works and if it is actually viable, with the data and information collected with the smaller project if we have the time we could modify it to work for cars. I would really recommend for people not only our age but everyone to get involved with similar projects because they could become a solution for many big cities. Our call of action for everyone is: “Want to have a healthy planet for your kids, with GSL projects you have a future guaranteed”
The 2019-20 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2020. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
