RoboKaland - An eco-conscious, digital and creative childrens' community
About this good practice
Every year a vast amount of electronic devices are discarded and landfilled – much of which is still usable or with little repair could still be used. On the other hand children and young people are extremely open to the world of electronics and have excellent ideas and interest to create new electronic gadgets.
RoboKaland is a small family enterprise, uniting these two aspects. The mother is a primary school teacher, the father is a hardware and software developer. They have created a well-equipped workshop and organise short retreats for children to disassemble old electronic tools and create new electronic gadgets and creations. A team of IT experts and scientists are involved in the interactive workshops. They welcome children with learning disabilities, too (e.g. autism): so far they have worked with 50+ such children.
In less than 3 years of operation RoboKaland has diverted more than 15 tons of electronic waste from landfilling and organised programmes for hundreds of children. Eco-consciousness is part of their mission: they try to find planned weaknesses in disassembled pieces and try to eliminate those in newly built devices. They collect working retro items and plan to open an electronics museum. They disassemble every part to the smallest possible component and what is not used up is taken to the recycling ward.
Resources needed
This is a garage-scale initiative. It is financed by parents who sign in their kids for the retreats. Technical equipment includes a workshop for handling digital gadgets. It is rund by a couple of an IT engineer and a teacher. External volunteers also contribute (e.g. IT experts and teachers).
Evidence of success
In less than 3 years of operation RoboKaland has diverted more than 15 tons of electronic waste from landfilling and organised programmes for hundreds of children. All their programmes are fully booked. (E.g. latest ones: 4 in July 2022 and 2 in August 2022). It is an award winning initiative: it won the Telekom Digital Hero award in 2022 and was featured in RTL Klub's "Between Sharks" TV show.
Potential for learning or transfer
Although it is a local initiative, it has very high transferability potential. It is already being scaled up, and this year retreats were started in other Hungarian cities also. It is an excellent example of saving electronic waste while educating children. It is a learning experience not only for the participating children, but also for the organisers and contributing volunteers. The initiative runs without any external financial support (i.e. project funding or commercial income). A workshop was installed from the pockets of the founding couple and activities are implemented on a volunteering basis (e.g. retired university teachers/researchers/IT experts as trainers), as well as from the financial contribution of children’s parents. The vision of the founding couple is to upscale this initiative and create a national network of kid's education electronic workshops across the country. As the principle is very simple, it can be easily replicated in other European countries also.