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Prikkle Academy's Grassroots Makerspace

place Nigeria

A 'school without teachers', anyone can learn and teach anything for fun and solving problems

An open solar-powered space within the community where children and youths in rural Nigeria can find and freely choose digital, technical and artistic tools to collaborate and create social solutions.

Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2016

Established

1.25K

Children

1

Countries
Updated
April 2019
Education has to be fun, personalized, engage a person's gift, trigger curiosity, set creativity in motion and give birth to unexpected solutions.

About the innovation

Why Grassroots Makerspace?

According to UNESCO, about 10.5 million children are out of school in Nigeria which represents 1 in 6 out-of-school children globally.

Why is it that children get bored in the classrooms, learn nothing and drop out from schools, but they don't drop out when it is time to play?

In rural Nigeria, there is a lack of educational resources to teach, high teacher's absenteeism and the curriculum is so archaic and rigid that it suppresses the creative mind of a child.

At Prikkle Academy, we asked, 'what if we can remove all the barriers to learning for any child, no matter their background, age or level of Education? What if we can allow them to turn the play they enjoy into learning and solving problems?'

Since 2016, we have answered, 'Why not, we are doing just that!' With our grassroots makerspace, any child now has space, the resources (such as computers, the internet, educational materials, etc) and other children to play with, without being judged as too playful.

They are free to create what catches their fancy, they are allowed to 'break and make', freely choose their tools and build what they will be proud to share with others.

At the makerspace, everyone is a teacher and a student. There are no wrong or right projects, everything is for the purpose of exploration and celebrating talents. We want to ensure that location, finance and every other barrier associated with the success of any child is removed forever.

Media

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Large tons of plastic bottles are thrown away by people every day in Nigeria. In Afon community (the location of our makerspace), the water is filled with bottles.This is causing a great disservice to the aquatic animals and to people living around these locations (since the water is unable to freely move, mosquitoes are so much there).We do not have what it takes, for now, to remove all these plastics, crush them into small pieces and recycle it into new forms or other materials.Nonetheless, our participants have found innovative products that we can turn these plastics into, that are useful for children and adults.One such use is to turn into 
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There are hundreds of cars in the community where we operate. In the houses where there are car owners, at least, there are 3 tyres that are no longer in use and the way of disposing of it has always been by burning (used to roast cows).The burning of the tyres cause huge air pollution and this affects the air the community people are breathing. So, we decided that instead of allowing more people to burn their tyres, we will turn it into beautiful chairs and tables that will inspire children to create when they come to the makerspace.One of our chairs is seen in this 
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Individuals are unique. There are special skills, talent and knowledge that each person has that if combined with the special skills of others, there will be excellent outcomes.At Prikkle Academy Makerspace, we are excited when we see children using their skills - peer-to-peer learning - and , painting and creations,As they paint, they learn how to mix, how to use brushes, how paints can stay or wash on different materials, how to listen to others, respect each others point of view and so on.
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Every weekend and sometimes during the weekdays, there is always an event somewhere around the community.After the events, there are hundreds of drinking straws that are used and they litter the whole place. Thousands of straws end up on the street, in the rivers and in landfills every month.Our participants are at the forefront of turning these straws into fashionable headbands, , necklaces and so on.
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At Prikkle Academy, we love Do-It-Yourself Projects. In fact, one of the ways we track the growth, learning and development of our participants is through a Do-It-Yourself Report Card - you document your own learning and think ahead what growth and solutions you desire in the future.We are happy to see that our participants now create , leading to learning new skills and reducing the burden on their parents to buy expensive shoes for them all year round.
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Our participants dived into learning Arduino programming language in 2017 and they know that knowledge isn't enough until they have used it in some ways to inspire change or bring about solutions.Recently, they noticed that teachers have to beat and shout at students for them to pick up the litters in the school. So, they thought about a fun and innovative way to make picking litters desirable for the children, They designed an  that opens by itself when you move close to it and closes by itself after you have dropped your litter.It is inspiring to see that children are always looking out for litters now, just to come and drop it in the dustbins.
PRIKKLE ACADEMY 1 : WASTE TO WEALTH
No matter the knowledge base of the children or teenager that come to the makerspace, there can get in action, all by themselves.Since Prikkle Academy Makerspace has available basic tools, technical and social resources that are needed to network with other people within the space and beyond, there is no limit to how far a child can go to learn, create amazing projects and give birth brilliant solutions.

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