We believe that innovation is the heart of all good work, whether it be in terms of storytelling, charity, or technology. We have long believed that innovation can change the world, and does so at the crossroads of culture, technology and education.

But it’s hard to teach innovation – even more so to students in the poorest country on Earth. 

This was the challenge we faced when UNICEF came to Creatable, our education innovation arm, and asked us to use STEM education to create sustainable systemic change in West Africa’s Burundi, a country ravaged by decades of climate change, civil unrest, and poverty.

We understood that STEM education has the power to change the hearts and minds of young people, opening up new possibilities for expression and creativity in their lives. After all, for half a decade, Creatable has taught students the real-world skills that they can use to enter a workforce in continual flux. We knew that we had to apply this principle – practical education, with the scope to be expanded and applied to a multitude of different industry contexts – to the situation in Burundi.

Our starting point was always the lived experience of those on the ground in Burundi. Using UNICEF’s U-Report app, which collects firsthand data from those in the developing world, we were told by Burundians that their biggest issue was indoor smoke inhalation, caused by cooking over open fires in homes, which kills more people worldwide than Malaria and Tuberculosis.  

These fuel-inefficient fires required frequent trips for firewood, putting Burundi’s young women and girls at risk of sexual assault. Moreover, the demands of domestic life were so great on the country’s young people, that most of them had dropped out of school by age 16. 

Thus, we came up with a course that makes innovation relevant by solving real-world problems. Our first unit taught students to build a fuel-efficient Rocket Stove that cooks while emitting little to no smoke, using materials available in their village. 

We trained local teachers to champion the course so that it could impact a greater number of students, providing them with cutting-edge resources, including blueprints for the stove, made out of upcycled local materials, as well as hands-on training. 

Almost immediately, our course had significant, observable results on the people of Burundi. Young Burundians brough the rocket stoves into their homes, building them for their families, and even formed business groups around the construction of the device. Their teachers noticed a behaviour change in these young people – they understood their own capacity for innovation.

After the success of the pilot programme, we are now partnering with Burundi’s Ministry of Education to embed this course and others into the national curriculum. Thanks to the power of innovation, Burundi is safer, greener, and more inclusive, now and into the future.