So in case you weren’t aware, this year we held a very special edition of the Beirut Service Jam in Bar Elias on February 27th and 28th. Our two day interactive workshop was held at the community center managed by our partners Sawa for Development & Aid and our attendees were 33 Syrian kids aged between 10 and 15.
As a quick reminder, the Beirut Service Jam is the Lebanese edition of the Global Service Jam, a yearly event to learn by doing about the practice of Service Design. Over a 100 cities participated this year all prototyping -around the same secret theme- some innovative ideas to change the world in under 48h!
Our special edition was meant to bring some change-making capacities to communities that don’t easily have access to that type of information while empowering them to tackle their daily problems.
Our very enthusiastic crowd was guided through a customized Design Thinking methodology throughout the two days.
The participants were divided into teams to emphasize the importance of teamwork and collaboration. After revealing the secret theme the kids were asked to interpret it and then draw individually a scene that connected the theme to a problem they encounter daily. Many ecological and health concerns seemed to be on top of their list, such as water pollution and garbage.
Once each team had voted on their preferred problem (in a democratic way), they had to think of all the stakeholders involved in this problem space and try to represent that specific character -as a simple way of understanding personas. This exercise was followed by a group stakeholder mapping to highlight the connections and interactions between the different characters.
Once the connections were established each team was asked to transform their characters into super heroes that could come and save the day!
The first day was concluded by a short role playing exercise where each of the teams presented their problem space to the others by acting it out. This allowed the kids to voice out their ideas and as one of our participants mentioned “find the courage to go on stage!”.
The second day was dedicated to the solution space. Each team delved back into the initial situation by drawing a storyboard. We introduced a simple framework with three sections: problem, solution and resolution; thus inviting the kids to think of an intervention that could affect the problem.
Once the improved scenarios were ready, each team started building a small model using arts and crafts materials. The point of the exercise being to bring the intangible problem into a sort of physicality.
The model served as the setting for a short movie where each team explained the problem their identified and the solution they brought to the table. The videos were uploaded online and can be viewed along with additional information on our page on the global platform (link).
Since jamming is all about being part of a global event, we had asked jammers from around the world to participate in a letter-sharing project. Our goal was to have our participants reflect on some of their learning from the workshop while sharing it with another jammer. So each kid drew a name from a hat and pinned the final destination of his letter to a world map. The drawings and letters of the kids revealed many interesting insight, but we’ll talk about that in a separate post.
Our final shared moment was viewing the videos each team had created together as a means to reflect again on their work and feel the pride of having accomplished something.
In many ways, we -the organizers and volunteers of BSJ- found this experience heart-warming and eye opening. We truly hope it benefited the kids equally!
This event could not haven been possible without the trust and collaboration of Sawa for development and aid and their amazing team and teachers. A special shout-out also goes to our amazing BSJ volunteers this year, namely (in alphabetic order): Adam (the nomadic helper), Fawzi (the patient carer), Haya (the warm-hearted), Nicolas (the positive energy) and Sandra (the leap taker).
Adam, Fawzi and Nicolas did not make it into the picture :(
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