Learners Lead the Way: South African Students Use Design Thinking to Transform Education and Safety

South Africa – 2025/06/06 – Future change makers from across South Africa have been attending a series of Solve for Tomorrow design thinking workshops, walking away not only with bold ideas but with the tools to turn those ideas into life-changing solutions for their communities.

The design thinking workshops are currently in progress and are hosted for the top 20 schools in each province. The workshops bring together bright students from public schools in quintiles 1 to 4, which generally serve communities with varying levels of access to resources, with quintile 1 having the least and quintile 5 the most.

These students are provided with hands on experience in design thinking methodology, which is a human centered problem-solving approach that empowers young people to tackle real issues through empathy, creativity, and iterative design

This year’s participants are addressing some of the country’s most pressing challenges, including power instability and child safety. Several teams are working on innovative solutions to combat the impact of load shedding and rising electricity costs in their schools, which continue to disrupt learning across the country. Concepts range from creating an environmentally friendly fuel made from recycled plastic, which can be used to power generators, to kinetic floor tiles that convert foot traffic into usable electricity. Each idea is aimed at creating sustainable, energy efficient schools.

Other teams are focusing on the safety of learners who travel long distances to school, often through unsafe areas. With child abduction rates on the rise and recovery rates alarmingly low, these young innovators are designing safety devices such as GPS enabled school backpacks, mobile apps for real time tracking, and SMS based emergency alert systems for low connectivity zones.

Throughout the workshops, students are moving through the five key stages of design thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Mentors guide them throughout the process. The process has helped the teams refine their initial ideas, gain critical feedback, and develop paper prototypes that directly respond to the needs of their communities.

"We came here with problems. Now, we're leaving with purpose," said Sambulo, a learner from Nkandla in KwaZulu Natal, whose team is developing a solar powered plastic window that will provide light during load shedding and assist with regulating the temperature in classrooms during cold and hot seasons, eliminating the need to use air conditioners that rely on electricity.

The workshops demonstrate the power of youth innovation when paired with the right support and structure. As the Solve for Tomorrow competition progresses, these solutions will continue to evolve with the potential to scale and impact learners nationwide.