Our creative design!

A week ago we posted a project on UpWork to find a designer to illustrate our picture cards for talent identification. The cards are going to show images of people engaged in various types of occupations, pursuing out-of-school interests and different kinds of emotions. Because, you know, we all have them, all of the above, regardless of which country you grew up in, or the colour of your skin.

Previous experience of having groups with picture cards have shown that they help children express themselves, using their own words and in their own time. Participants have learnt new words and expressions, and engaged in topics that interest them. One girl in Uganda said, “For the first time I have talked about something that is important to me!” Need I say more?

When we tested our picture card idea in asylum centers for unaccompanied minors aged 16 to 18 years in Norway, one of the girls told us the she has a great interest for Mathematics. She wants to become an engineer. “I enjoy thinking and thinking and thinking a lot. In Mathematics you think a lot. You become smart.” While one of the boys from Afghanistan told us that he wants to become a teacher. He views teachers as “holy”, because they teach other people and share knowledge. “The world improves and gets better. Teacher is a good thing. Those who do bad things in the world have very bad thoughts.”

For our project post on UpWork we received applications from 27 designers, in countries all over the world! Designers have expressed interests and engagement for our work in countries from Europe, in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Northern America. All of them with engaging and creative design. How about that! :D We are thrilled, and impressed with all of their work. In fact, we found it difficult to choose from the 27 applicants that we decided to withdraw our project post after a couple days of posting it. We figured that we don’t need to make the task of choosing more difficult than it already is.

Having considered all of the applicants we have decided to choose one designer for illustrations for use in kindergartens, and another designer for illustrations for use in schools. We are in the final stages of deciding who we are going to ask to participate in our project.

Thank you to all of those who applied, and good luck in your endavours.