8  |  Solutions  |  July-August 2016  |  www.thesolutionsjournal.org

Idea LabNoteworthy

Syrian Refugees Reclaim Childhoods through Arts Therapyby Nihal Kayali

For many children escaping the Syrian war, the trauma of violence and loss lingers long after the journey away from home. In Sultanbeyli, a suburb of Istanbul with a burgeoning refugee population, children who have sur-vived the worst of war are now dealing with the stress of settling in a town where they do not understand the lan-guage and are shut out of overcrowded neighborhood schools.

Enter Project Lift, an organization that has brought expressive arts therapy classes to Syrians aged four to 13 in an effort to ease post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms while pro-viding a space for children to harness their creative impulses. In what were once drab municipal offices, Project Lift now facilitates a lively five-day curriculum of dancing, drumming, and drawing for Syrian refugees.

“If you can boost a child’s imagi-nation, you improve their ability to problem solve,” says Leyla Akca, Chief Advisor to Project Lift. The program, which applies the Skills for 

Psychological Recovery model and includes home visits before and after the week-long program, has served over 600 children in Sultanbeyli. Run by licensed therapists and a cadre of trained volunteers who use a blend of English, Turkish, Arabic, and motions to communicate, Project Lift ensures that no student is left unheard or unattended to.

Akca emphasized the value of creative outlets as therapy for refugee children, some of whom are unable to “self-regulate” and therefore deal with conflict by acting out disruptively or closing further in on themselves. 

Noteworthy. (2016). Solutions 7(4): 8–12.

Caroline Gluck/ECHO/EU Refugee children wait at a food kitchen in Turkey in February 2015.

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Idea LabNoteworthy

Such behavior makes it difficult for some refugee children to integrate in schools, where classmates may interpret erratic behavior not as a symptom of trauma but as pretext for exclusion or derision. By harnessing imaginative thinking through art, students are better able to visualize various solutions to problems they encounter.

“The kids are surprisingly resilient,” Akca reflects. “They come every day smiling, learning, and thriving.”

With any luck, come September, space will open up in local schools for more Syrian students. Equipped with the preparation of Project Lift, these children will be better prepared to embrace educational opportunities and take on the daunting challenges of integrating into a new school. 

Ugandan Women Design Their Own Futureby Jennie Spector

Uganda’s next generation of female doctors, lawyers, accountants, and human rights professionals may have gotten their start through sandal design.

Women in Uganda face an uphill climb toward attaining high level education and employment. Only 5.4 percent of men and women officially eligible for tertiary education were enrolled in 2010, and of that small number, 44 percent were women. Supporting these women to someday see their name on a university diploma is the aim of Sseko Designs, a sandal and accessory design social enterprise dedicated to providing women with dignified employment, financial planning tools, and a sturdy link from secondary school to a university education.

Ugandan students take a nine-month gap between secondary school and university in order to earn tuition funds. This gap challenges the momen-tum of women hoping to leap from secondary to university graduation, as the fairly equitable number of women in secondary education does not translate into equality in social and economic spheres. A UN Millennium Development Goals report notes that women in Uganda spend significantly 

more hours completing unpaid, home-care activities than men, and an average of seven hours less engaged in economic activity. Even if able to find reliable employment, the same UN report notes a startling wage gap, with men’s median wages around double that of women’s, regardless of the manner of employment.

This is where Sseko steps in. The fashion line aims to employ “high potential” women during their 

IICD A female graduate works in information and communications technology in Bushenyi, Uganda.

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Idea LabNoteworthy

nine-month gap, along with a long-term team of Ugandan women from all walks of life. More than 70 women have graduated from the university program so far, and all participants have gone on to pursue university edu-cation. Fifty percent of the university program participants’ paycheck is only accessible when a tuition payment is due, ensuring that the money earned will only be used to secure a true route out of poverty by way of education. Sseko then provides scholarships that match 100 percent of the money each woman has saved away at the end of her nine-month term. Sseko also partners with a non-profit for women previously in the sex industry, providing crucial dignifying, fair-wage employment within that community.

Integrating women into the eco-nomic landscape is good for business and society. Liz Bohannon, the founder of Sseko, observes that Ugandan women only needed “to work in an environment and with people who saw beyond the seemingly impossible barriers of the now and had a vision for what they would become” in order to succeed. Sseko graduates are the inevitable future of their country, and through dignified employment and education, the future, and the fashion, looks bright.

Read more at ssekodesigns.com. 

Redesigning Conservation: Adidas Announces Recycled 3D-printed Shoeby Devin Windelspecht

An estimated 4.8 million metric tons of plastic waste enter our oceans each year—that’s 13,000 metric tons per day. As plastics don’t biodegrade, this mass of artificial junk is slowly accumulating in the ocean, poisoning 

some marine life outright and killing others that mistake the toxic bits for food. While this problem may seem insurmountable by the sheer magnitude of plastic waste that is now floating in our oceans (to put it in per-spective, in 1961 only eight million metric tons of plastic were produced annually), a seemingly unlikely company is helping lead the charge in chipping away at this plastic pol-lution through the best way it knows how: sporting gear.

The company in question is Adidas, and their solution is a new, high-performance shoe made entirely from recycled ocean waste. Based on the design of Adidas’s previously unveiled “Futurecraft 3D” concept shoe, which features a unique, 3D-printed midsole, Adidas’s new recycled shoe replaces the Futurecraft’s plastic-based sole with recycled polyester and fishing nets retrieved from ocean waste. In addition, the new shoe will substitute 

the previous design’s yarns with fibers broken down from ocean plastic and illegal deep-sea gillnets.

Adidas’s recycled shoe is crafted in partnership with Parley for the Oceans, a conservation group founded in 2013 that is committed to the protection and conservation of Earth’s oceans. This partnership feeds into Adidas’ new three-pronged approach to help conserve the world’s oceans, dubbed “AIR,” or “Avoid, Intercept, Redesign.” In addition to the production of their new, 3D-printed shoe, Adidas’s new commitment plans to fade out both plastic bags in retail stores and plastic microbeads in body care products, both of which contribute to plastic ocean waste. In addition, the company will position several Adidas employees as ambassadors for Parley for the Oceans, helping push forward the new conservation group’s mission.

Adidas’s recycled shoe line is set to be released later this year. 

Design Milk Prototype for Adidas’ recycled shoe made from ocean plastic.

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Idea LabNoteworthy

Women Lead the Fight to Save Mother Natureby Zeynep Karatas

Women are stepping up to the plate in the fight against climate change.

Earlier this year, the UN appointed six women to hold the highest posi-tions in its efforts to fight climate change. Patricia Espinosa was approved in late May to replace Christiana Figueres as the UN Climate Chief. Ms. Espinosa will be joined by Ségolène Royal, Hakima El Haite, Laurence Tubiana, Sarah Baashan, and Jo Tyndall—creating an all-female team to lead UN talks.

According to Women’s Environment and Development Organisation, women on average have made up just 30 percent of delegates at the annual summit since 2008.

Some have argued that women are more severely harmed by climate change, which has promoted the notion that women should be leading efforts to save the environment.

Canada’s female Environment Minister, Catherine McKenna, was recently bombarded with harsh criticisms after tweeting that women are more vulnerable to climate change effects. In the US, a woman leads environmental issues: Gina McCarthy is the US Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

McKenna is not alone in her stance that women are the greater victims of climate change, despite being tar-geted with great criticism. “Because of these existing gender inequalities that are perpetuated by customs, social practices, and even economic structures, women are more vulner-able,” says Verona Collantes, a climate change specialist with UN Women told VICE News.

Women stepping up to positions of leadership for fighting against climate change are significant not only because they might be the greater victims of the environmental phe-nomenon, but also because women are better positioned to bring tangible change.

According to the UN Women and Climate Change Factsheet, women worldwide are in a greater position to contribute to changing environmen-tal realities due to their roles in the household. 

Ikea Grounds Sustainable Packaging Future with Mushroom Rootsby Naomi Stewart

Polystrene has been a dominant player in the packaging industry since its early days of being manufactured in Germany by I.G. Farben—just think of all the Styrofoam found in product packaging in the United States and Canada. Though incredibly adaptable as a compound and useful for both goods production and delivery, it’s 

UN Photo/Marco Castro Patricia Espinosa, who has been approved to become the next UN Climate Chief.

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Idea LabNoteworthy

very environmentally unfriendly. Polystrene takes hundreds of years to break down, is resistant to photolysis, and is one of the main pollutants in ocean debris. It is often mistaken for food by fish and birds, which can kill them if too much is eaten. At the same time, polystyrene ingestion also introduces associated toxic chemicals into the food chain.

To tackle this problem, two young American men teamed up 10 years ago. Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre met in an ‘inventor’s class’ and developed an insulation material from agricultural waste and fungus, which 

their professor encouraged them to turn into a product. That biodegrad-able mushroom packaging idea has grown into the sustainable goods company Ecovative, which counts furniture and home goods giant Ikea amongst their latest clients.

In making the packaging, agri-cultural waste like corn husks is first gathered from local farmers and cleaned and bagged with fungus. The fungus eats the waste and forms small matrices of roots (mycelium) around each par-ticle. After a few days, the mix is broken up and poured into packaging molds, where the mycelium grows into specific 

shapes. These bricks are removed, treated to prevent further growth, and are then ready for use. Once used, they can be composted at home and easily biodegrade in the garden.

Now, in 2016, Ecovative’s mush-room packing has been confirmed for use by Ikea in the company’s efforts to increase sustainability. Considering the breadth of Ikea’s distribution, as well as other major multinational Ecovative clients like Dell, this simple yet effective solution is well on its way to having a positive and widespread impact on reducing the amount of non-biodegradable polystyrene globally. 

MyCoBond An Ecovative wine shipper.