School Led Social Enterprise, Design and Repair Program

Fix-ed was born with a desire to prepare youth with valuable 21st Century skills to tackle problems head-on, responding adequately to current & future community challenges. Co-designed from end-to-end between PSSC leadership, teachers, students & Strategic Design Consultancy Seven Positive, the project has drawn on a diverse range of experiences & testing from other successful school programs & projects at the school. Students follow a collaborative, Human Centred Design approach which sees them engage, design & empathise with target users. In prototyping & testing product & service ideas early on, as well as practicing social entrepreneurship, students understand the gap between ideas & execution.

Fix-ed delivers a tailored, relevant and innovative learning experience which sees students, teachers and community collaborators engaged, passionate and hungry to succeed whilst strong community connections and outcomes are delivered. The resulting educational experience is adaptive and agile to the needs of all stakeholders (whether in urban or remote areas), recognising that each participant group and local community is unique. The adaptive Fix-ed model which sees design, social entrepreneurship and valuable repair skills in practice is currently being developed as a Train-the-Trainer model in order to scale the program (and the resultant positive community impact) from 2018.

Fix-ed is centred around delivering strong outcomes to both participating youth and their local communities. Student-led solutions focus on enhancing community wellbeing. Community service providers are collaborating, providing knowledge and resources whilst target users are participating in the design process alongside users. Other valued collaborators provide access to broken goods (such as mobility scooters, bicycles and lawn mowers), giving students the opportunity to divert waste from landfill, repair objects and include them as part of their service offering. This creates a win-win situation that sees people experiencing hardship get access to products and services that can drastically improve their life.

In an age where designers are shifting from being dictators to facilitators, all stakeholders involved in Fix-ed learn the value of participatory design processes and methods as a way to creatively and effectively tackle problems. Whether students, teachers and community participants are based in cities or regionally, Fix-ed's adaptability and scalability will see a diverse range of communities able to interact, engage and maximise positive social impact. The ability to partner with local collaborators to source repairable objects and tackle relevant local community issues alongside participants irrelevant of their age, gender, origin or ethnicity makes Fix-ed inclusive and ensures equitable outcomes.

The program is highly innovative in the way it engages students to lead a social enterprise (and not just talk about them) as well as the blended content which responds to strong research from the FYA and government research. Whilst design thinking, entrepreneurship and repair programs are not new to education, the unique blend and delivery of these three core areas, combined with the scalable, sustainable model allow Fix-ed to deliver a groundbreaking value proposition for students, teachers and the wider community. The ease in which other schools and community partners will be able to join this program to provide location specific, original solutions to community issues is yet to be seen in other programs.

Student projects aim to provide direct positive impact for society with current responses focusing on: - “How might we enhance social connectedness for and with our elderly citizens?” - "How might we tackle inequality amongst youth in the community whilst developing creativity & enterprise skills?" Students develop life-long skills which prepare them to turn problems into opportunities. Teachers develop their professional skills throughout the program and learn easy-to-apply processes and skills they can use in other subject areas. Communities unite through meaningful collaboration to create sustainable futures. University student mentors visit the program and are strong role models for participants.

Fix-ed is a fun, hands-on program that is teaching me how to use design, repair & enterprise skills to benefit the community. Liam, Student. The Fix-ed program teaches students HCD, social entrepreneurship & repair skills which prepare students to think critically & creatively to tackle community issues. Risk taking & creative thought needs to be encouraged to allow students to come up with strong solutions to problems. Entrepreneurship is about giving young people the license to take risks. John Thornberry, Principal. By collaborating, there is strong potential to provide help to community members who are experiencing hardship whilst supporting an innovative program. John Messenger, Director, Active Scooters