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Start-Ups for SDGs in Global Entrepreneurship Week 2018

6/17/2018

 
Start-Ups for SDGs during Global Entrepreneurship Week 2018
Thursday 15th November 2018, 15.00 – 19.00 CEST, General Assembly, UN, Palais des Nations

The Start-Ups for SDGs is a pitching event organised by UNCTAD, taking place during Global Entrepreneurship Week. Ten candidates from developing countries pitch their enterprises to an Expert Panel of impact investors for feedback, guidance and the opportunity to secure funding.
 
Here are 3 easy ways to get involved:

1.Ideas To Change The World Posters: Get your children and youth to draw and describe their innovative enterprise solutions to achieve Sustainable Development Goal #13 – Climate Action.
 
We’ll provide an Ideas Canvas template and instructions to generate the incredible ideas for enterprises, using Flow In Action’s learn to move mountains® approach.
 
The posters will be used to create a display inside and outside of the event at the UN, Palais des Nations.
 
2.Flash Mob for SDGs: Come along with your children and youth and take part in the youth-led Flash Mob for SDGs.
 
Whilst the Expert Panel are evaluating the pitches, the young people in the audience will lead the audience in a ‘flash mob’ singing/dancing activity with the theme of celebrating positive action.
 
 
3.Be Part of the Audience: Inspire children and youth by coming along to the event, to hear and see young entrepreneur’s sharing their ideas. Use it as a platform for encouraging them as innovators and entrepreneurs as they view the ‘entrepreneur’s journey’ inside the United Nations.

Email elaine@flowinaction.org to register your interest and receive an event pack.

learn to move mountains® kids workshop 9th June

5/27/2018

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Beat Plastic Pollution in our Mountains and Lakes: let’s reinvent snowsports to leave no trace.

The workshop empowers children (7 -12 years old) to be happy agents of change! 

Every child's creativity counts in this inclusive, fun workshop where all ideas count. They bring their brilliant, beautiful, unique imaginations and we play with ideas to change the world.

It is a ‘change-maker space’ where we take on a Sustainable Development Goal, exploring how we can solve it with incredible inventions. 

We dream big, mash-up all of our creativity, riff on innovative solutions to big challenges, build prototypes from trash, tell the story of our inventions – everything is possible when we play like this! 

We empower children to make a positive impact on their communities, building their resilience, wellbeing and entrepreneurial mind-set, equipping them with the skills for solving real-world challenges now.

After the workshop, Elaine shares a montage of the prototypes to innovation experts such as Professor Jonathan Rossiter, Professor of Robotics at the University of Bristol.

Your kids will leave the workshop as happy, hopeful, confident adventurers, believing in their problem-solving creativity.

Playing, inventing and laughing: what better way to spend a Saturday as a kid? 

Sign up via: 
https://ltmmeco.eventbrite.com
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Changemaker Wellbeing - It’s time to see things as they really are!

4/1/2018

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How would you rate your wellbeing? 

​As someone with a social mission, your ‘emotional contract’ with your work motivates you to take one more step each day.

However, because your life’s purpose is deeply personal, it can be hard to get started and expose your ideas to criticism; and because you want to make extraordinary impact, there are times when you may become inert and disheartened by the scale of the task around you.

Conversely, we may also take everything on, allowing ourselves to get distracted from our real goals so that we can stay safe, even if it’s in safe discomfort.

Another tried and tested version of not looking after our wellbeing, is to take everything on and ‘burn out’ as we strive to make the most impact that we can. 

You might be brilliant at recognising other people’s capacity to make social change happen but struggle to recognise your own extraordinary contribution each day, as you use your strengths and skills to take action in ways that are meaningful to you.

Being a resilient, happy agent of change


Being a resilient agent of change, is not about being ‘tough’ and putting up with things that make you unhappy. Instead, resilience is about living from a place of knowing who you are, celebrating your unique blend of self and drawing on all of this so that you can adapt to and overcome challenges.

Resilience is a fundamental part of your wellbeing. It is your core of creativity, joy, adaptability and connection to the world.

To quote Diane Coutu:

“Resilient people…possess three characteristics: a staunch acceptance of reality; a deep belief, often buttressed by strongly held values, that life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to improvise.” How Resilience Works, Diane L Coutu. Harvard Business Review, May 2002 

What are you putting up with that makes you unhappy?

Are you choosing overload? Are you overwhelmed and disheartened?

All of these things get in the way of you achieving your purpose - to make change happen!

In today's uncertain world, more than ever, you need to care for your wellbeing so that you can keep caring for others too. You need to build that connection to your resilience.

Start your wellbeing journey by seeing things as they really are

When you look at the blueprint of your everyday life, without judgement or self-policing, what is making you happy and fulfilled and what is getting in the way of your wellbeing?

The table below might seem trivial (you can download it as a PDF here), but if you have to think hard for more than a minute or two, about responses to the statements then press the pause button.

Ask yourself why you're struggling to respond. If you think, "I'm too busy to think about it right now," then that is an answer in itself - how separate are you from the things that make you happy that responses don't pour out of you.


If you are truly flourishing as you are, then use your responses as a way of celebrating. We need to celebrate happiness more often!

If your responses opened up a need to be more connected to your wellbeing, then get in touch. If you find yourself saying, “I should be happy but…”, then get in touch. If you need some help with decisions you know that you need to make, then get in touch.

We can find your way forward together with 1-1 coaching online or face-to-face in Geneva or the Swiss mountains.

Start with an email to elaine@flowinaction.org 

#wellbeing #resilience #agentsofchange #sdg3 #whocaresforthecarers #perma #grit #liveyourpassion #changemakers #socinn #socent


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3 ways playing with ideas builds youth resilience

3/12/2018

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Someone asked me this week why I focus on getting people, especially young people, to play with ideas.

(Each week I include an Ideas Practice connecting to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the e-news that goes out. Sign up on the Home Page to receive it.)

It is a key part of my practice because it is a ‘change-maker space’ for building resilience, the capacity to adapt to challenges and continue to move forward in life.

In this space with me, everybody gets to build the ingredients that go into being resilient[1] because everybody gets to play.

Why do I care about kids being resilient?
Because it is an essential part of their wellbeing, as well as the personal life-skills that they need to take action in making positive change happen.

…and we need GenZ to take action more than ever!

Giving them to passion to achieve the SDGs using their creativity, connects to a profound sense of their purpose in their lives.

Take 3 ingredients
Here are three of the ingredients that increase resilience; they are also character strengths that play a role in wellbeing.

> Empathy – Defined as the ability to understand and share other people’s feelings, we connect by exploring their everyday experiences and other people might be experiencing those things too.

> Risk-taking – When we play, we are adventurers and adventurous in our thinking and actions; we take incredible risks, adapting as we go and picking ourselves up when things don’t go to plan.

> Flexible Thinking – We change perspective, choosing new ways to see challenges, making sure that we recognise challenges as events that are ‘specific, external and temporary’ rather than down to who we are.
​
Play, play, play
And so, we play within our ethical framework: freestyling, iterating, dreaming up the seemingly impossible, saying the simple obvious things too; gently building our resilience, ready to adapt as we go.

We play as equals in our creativity, creating a prism of insights where everyone’s voice matters, because in that ‘space between[2]’ the rules, is exactly where we will find our courage to do something different. And that something different, might be the very thing that changes everything.

To quote Picasso, “I start with an idea and then it becomes something else.”

It is breath-taking to watch the alchemy at work when young people are in this space. I see their joy and it is contagious.

Because of these resilient agents of change, I am hopeful for the world we are in.

[1] Reivich, K., 2003. The Resilience Factor: Seven Essential Skills for Overcoming Life’s Inevitable Obstacles. Crown Publishing Group.
 
[2] Zolli, A., 2013. Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back. Business Plus

#flowinaction #flow #resilience #grit #wellbeing #innovators #entrepreneurs #growthmindset #sdg3 #adventurers #ideas #creativity #empathy
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Water Carry Prototypes from Class E

3/9/2018

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Class E Lemania-Verbier International School were totally rocking it yesterday building their first prototype designs for their water carry on the mountain on World Water Day 22nd March.

They were turning the incredible ideas that they have been working on into a miniature maquette to test what worked and to refine the design. Water proof testing was carried out successfully! Mostly!

Maannnn, these kids are funny. Audacious ideas, collaborating to make them real, teamwork, questions, laughter, noisy creativity...and like meercats at the mention of chocolate! I can confirm there is no limit to the chocolate that they can eat.

Super proud of these resilient adventurous agents of change.

​#agentsofchange
 #resilience #grit #wellbeing #hope #purposedriven#ideas #innovators #entrepreneurs
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Water Carry Prototypes from Class F

3/9/2018

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Not to be outshone, Class F at Lemania-Verbier International School also totally rocked it yesterday building their prototypes of their World Water Day - Water Carry designs.

We put on some tunes, tried to ignore the smell from the sour milk bottle that was part of the recyclable materials we were using and got on with creating.

With one man missing, Team Fearless dug deep and came up with the goods!

Warning to parents of Team Snowboard Survival...you may find some of your mountain kit has been 'borrowed' and turned into the larger prototype during the next couple of weeks!

...and Team Bike Magicians' excellent design passed the water proofing test!

Fantastic, ambitious, practical ideas turned into prototypes. These young people are full of imagination, they are risk-takers and adventurous problem-solvers.

They make me smile, smile, smile and I'm very proud of them.

#flowinaction #agentsofchange #creativity #ideas #resilience #grit #wellbeing #innovators #entrepreneurs #changemakers #adventurers #happiness
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