I have another foundation that I created in 2020 which has the objective of supporting the students with special needs. This foundation is being very successful and during the process of delivering dreams to those students I came up with several problems such as floods, typhoons, wildfires, food insecurity, and several others. I decided that it would be important to invest in STEM solutions.
One typical example is the work I did with students with special needs from the Tagaytay City Special Education Center in the Philippines. I knew them from the work on my previous foundation and I partnered with them to participate in the British International Education Association STEM Challenge which had the focus on creating innovation to combat the negative consequences of the fast fashion. This industry is responsible for 10% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and 40 million tons of textiles worldwide through in the landfills. I worked together with them to create a line of clothing that would use sustainable textiles and technologies that would inhibit people from simply discarding these clothes in the landfills. I took advantage of the incredible art skills of the students with special needs to create a solution proposal to combat fast fashion that was submitted to this competition. As this example, there are additional ones that I have implemented with the same objective.
I initially started to work with the contacts I already had with my previous foundation, the If You Can Dream Foundation where I met a large number of students with special needs worldwide. As the number of projects grew and the requirements of the competition diversified, I started working with additional students that I met through social media. This is the case of the group of students from the Interact Club from Rotary International in Brazil or the students from the Lakota Indian Reservation in Allen South Dakota, United States. The same principles were used in all of them. I created a solution and then I mentored them on the solution to a point where they become productive for the competition or for the conference we would be aiming.
The process is very easy:
1) Go to the Innovation International Foundation homepage at https://www.innovationinternational.org
2) Look at the different STEM solutions I am investing on
3) Simply send me a note to haragutchi@gmail.com with the area you want to invest in
4) A Zoom meeting is initially setup to agree on expectations
5) Additional Zoom meeting are setup to work on the project
