30 July 2024, India – Standard Chartered Bank and Museum of Solutions, the unique children’s museum in Mumbai, have signed an agreement to jointly incubate the Futuremakers programme by enabling 100 city-based children from Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) schools to create a prototype of sustainable solutions for real world problems. Standard Chartered Bank, with a presence of over 165 years in India, and Museum of Solutions have roped in Teach for India as their support partner for this programme.
Through this joint programme, Museum of Solutions will conduct extensive workshops and training sessions to enable a group of 100 school children to explore skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and leadership, which are essential to create a
workforce necessary for dealing with the challenges of the future. These children will develop, build, and prototype new ideas to solve future challenges, while promoting a meaningful change within the community. It will aim to deliver two sets of focused skills to these students.
1. The first set of skills-sets will focus on Hydroponics, Composting & Kitchen Gardening, Automation, Fabric work and Hand prototyping.
2. The second set of skills imparted to the children will include Making a business plan, developing a campaign etc.
For the first cohort of the programme, which has commenced, the Museum of Solutions selected 50 students from Karamveer School, Sion, Anand Nagar Municipal School, Chembur, and Worli Sea Face Municipal School, Prabhadevi. The first cohort of prototype solutions for real-world problems, like water-related challenges, developments associated with sustainable food, and skill building sessions such as robotics, hand prototyping, and laser cutting design will be presented to industry leaders and investors in December 2024, and the second cohort of prototypes will be presented in March 2025.
Additionally, under this programme, the Bank will fund the visits of more than 15,000 Mumbai’s municipality school students to the Museum of Solutions during this academic year.
The Standard Chartered Bank and Museum of Solutions will jointly collaborate with BMC Education Department to ensure equitable access to the Museum for children from Municipality schools across Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.
According to Karuna Bhatia, Head Sustainability, Standard Chartered Bank and Global Business Services, India, “The Bank’s Futuremakers programme embodies its’ commitment to creating a brighter tomorrow for communities worldwide through strategic partnerships and investments in education and entrepreneurship, and a focus on sustainable development goals.
Futuremakers by Standard Chartered empowers disadvantaged students by providing quality education and training opportunities to boost their technical, and soft skills. This specific programme will enable the BMC school children to gain a critical understanding of global and local issues surrounding sustainability. Based on this empowered knowledge, these children will ideate to create sustainable solutions for real world social and environmental problems. We are providing these children access to industry experts and structured knowledge to develop solution-building orientation in these children.”According to Abhik Bhattacherji, Head Marketing, Museum of Solutions, “At MuSo, we aim to create a space for children to build knowledge and skills that can be applied in real-life situations to solve problems and drive positive change. The Futuremakers program will offer school children a platform to gain a deeper understanding of environmental and social issues, focusing on fostering a curiosity-driven and solution-oriented mindset. This program will enable children to comprehend key issues related to sustainable development and encourage them to create solutions that lead to a sustainable and more equitable future.”
Mumbai is home to about 2 million children from diverse backgrounds. The city has a wide network of primary, secondary, and higher secondary schools with over 1200 BMC run schools and about 300 private schools. Futuremakers by Standard Chartered Bank is a global youth economic empowerment initiative, tackling inequality and promoting greater economic inclusion. Futuremakers supports
disadvantaged young people aged 35 or below, to learn new skills. Focusing on three pillars – Education, Employability and Entrepreneurship – Futuremakers aims to help the next generation learn, earn, and grow.