School students combine design and technology for humanitarian aid

Students from three Geelong secondary colleges took over Deakin University's Centre for Advanced Design and Engineering Training (CADET) this week in the name of humanitarian aid.

Working in three groups, the 20 Year 10 students from Sacred Heart College, Clonard College and St Joseph's College will utilise CADET's state-of-the-art facilities such as 3D printers, laser cutters, robotics and a virtual reality laboratory to create solutions for three challenges facing the humanitarian sector. The students will present their design solutions on Friday afternoon. 

The first challenge: create a recyclable flat-pack cardboard bed for homeless people and those caught in disaster areas. The bed must be lightweight, self-contained, and easy to transport.

The second challenge: create a flat-pack shelter that can replace temporary tents used in humanitarian aid and refugee camps around the world. The shelter must be easy to transport and roughly the same weight as a standard tent.

The third challenge: create a pop-up school that can be placed into disaster zones to get children back to school – and into a normal comforting routine – quickly. The school must hold at least 25 people, be modular in design to allow for extensions, and able to be quickly and easily erected.

The catch? Students can't use nails, tape or glue in their designs.

Deakin's Jason Steinweidel, Programme Manager at CADET, explains that the parameters for each assignment are deliberately broad in order to push students' creativity to the limit.

"The real challenge for students is to combine a great idea with the right materials and the right technology to turn the idea into a reality," he said.

"The exercise is not about solving problems but helping the next generation of engineers to understand what they can achieve.

"Engineering is about so much more than building a bridge. It's all about clever design and design is central to solving problems in the world today and into the future.

"Here at CADET, we're incubating the next generation of designers who will go on to form organisations and start-up companies that we can barely imagine today."

The students spent the first two days brainstorming ideas and coming up with possible solutions. On Wednesday, they presented organisers with a list of materials they needed and the technology they needed to use. From Wednesday to Friday, they have been creating their solutions to present to parents, teachers and CADET staff on Friday afternoon.