https://solve.mit.edu/challenges/youth-skills-the-workforce-of-the-future/solutions/2052

Basic Information

In 2 – 3 sentences, briefly summarize your solution

My goal: To create academies in developing countries, offering collaborative immersion study in propulsion and biological pathways (fungi), teaching children engineering skills, positively impacting their future and their communities, sparking the next generation to research space technology and sustainable organic systems. Partnerships with corporations will fund my Quasar Academies.

Define the problem your solution solves

Students whose creativity is trapped within themselves because of economic, geographic, and social barriers, need a pathway to the future. If creativity is not nurtured than the risk of losing a whole generation occurs, fomenting cynicism, violence and a nihilism that will engulf the world.

Define your theory of change

Offering hope, personal meaning, and belonging while learning to conceptualize, design and build, will create a cadre of young engineers, the glue to hold together a more just and thoughtful global society. The collaborative nature of the Quasar Academy will nurture creativity and teach the interconnectedness of life, linking gamma wave resistant fungi with new propulsion and spacecraft design, offering those without access the chance to design new sustainable systems for life on earth and in space. Young world engineers working together at Quasar Academy, free from economic, social, and geographical restrictions will build the future.

Target Outcomes

Describe the target outcomes of your solution

Although this solution is directed to helping low-income students and communities, the innovation generated through Quasar Academies will affect the whole world. Education and an opportunity, connectivity with others all around the world will create new teachers and engineers empowering startups and community innovations that will impact the lives of millions in a beneficial way.

Technology

What makes your solution unique?

Quasar Academy is combining the voices of disadvantaged kids from all over the world to understand the key engineering and biological frameworks found in things as ancient as radioactive resistant fungi (implemented in human genetics using CRISPR). This will teach design and building strategies that could be integrated into, aeronautical, astrobiology, and cellular solutions, positively impacting all life on earth and our footprint in space.

How is this use of technology human-centered?

The whole philosophy of Quasar Academy is to discover, develop and integrate the creativity of the young people of the developing world. Their creativity is at the center and is the spirit, that drives all the technology that they will learn about and develop.

How will people access your solution?

People will access these solutions by participating in brick and mortar classes led by Quasar Academy community mentors. They will be also connected online via the Quasar Academy Social Network.

Business Plan

What is your team’s plan for sustaining yourself financially as you research, pilot, grow, and scale your solution?

To overcome financial limitations, partnerships between large corporations will be necessary. In return, these companies will have an entitlement to the graduate’s research. Also because this solution is a non-profit endeavor we will hold donation/charity events to raise money.

Define factors limiting the ability of your solution to succeed

Quasar Academy will need the initial funding for the brick and mortar schools, mentors and small infrastructure. We envision partnering with aerospace and bio engineering companies to achieve this.

Why are you applying to Solve? What do you hope to achieve by becoming a Solver?

By being an MIT Solver I will begin to instill confidence and well being to disadvantaged kids by opening the world of space engineering to them. This will dissolve the growing divide between the rich and the poor and those who have never before thought they could be a part of the journey to the stars.