Create spaces for children that are conducive to open dialogue. That is how children are able to give voice to their opinions and ideas. This also enables them to explore and break down complex challenges.
Focus on the User
The judges also look for evidence of children engaging with their community to understand needs and perspectives while dealing with the challenge at hand.
Thinking Beyond the Obvious
Generate a large variety of ideas, and select those that directly fulfil the needs of the people the children are designing change for. Students should try to think beyond obvious answers like raising money or conducting a rally.
Know the Impact
It is important for the children to go out and collect statistics and feedback from the community once their act of change has been completed.
The Change Within
At the end, the judges like to see how the children have changed their attitude by talking, drawing and writing about it.
Quality of Sharing
There are points allotted for sharing the story of change with as many people as possible in as many different ways as possible.
The stories submitted for the School Challenge undergo an intensive Jury process for evaluation. The DFC Jury comprises of designers and social entrepreneurs from all across the globe.
The evaluation is done in two stages:
Stage 1: Online Evaluation
The DFC Jury goes through each and every entry and marks it on the basis of:
FEEL: Demonstration of the understanding of other's needs
Higher scores should show the ways the children went out to directly understand the needs of others.
IMAGINE: Connecting needs to ideas
Higher scores should show a broad range of relevant ideas.
DO: Successful implementation of the vision
It's essential that the team implemented their vision. Did they implement their idea? Do you show it in action?
SHARE: Demonstration of change for community and personal change
The submission should show the effect or impact on the community. The submission should also have evidence of any change that the students feel in their own lives as a result of having done this, if any. Any other unexpected results.
This process helps the jury select 200 stories that go through stage 2 of the evaluation.
Stage 2 : Jury Meet
The DFC Jury meets at the Riverside School, Ahmedabad for two days to go through the two hundred stories and select the Top 100 stories.
This is a very intense selection process and each jury member goes through the stories several times before the final winners' list is prepared.