The Greenseeds Creative Cards toolkit allows children to explore and learn more about a broad range of topics that include environment, conservation health and social issues.
Creative, immersive exercises allow young minds to explore several critical issues, learn more about them and share that knowledge. Which then encourages lifelong advocacy for these issues.

The kit includes guides and resources for moderators to help them effectively use the material provided. Moderators play an important role in guiding and facilitating the activities and exercises in the toolkit. Moderators may include teachers/educators, parents, grass roots organizations as well as creative organizations, design professionals and students in design schools/colleges. The content and activities in the toolkit are relevant to both urban and rural children.

Kit of parts
Using the toolkit

Kit of parts

Topic Triggers :

Topic Triggers form the basis of the toolkit. They are a set of 30 cards that are divided into the following role playing categories:
Environmentalist, Conservation Expert, Public Health Advisor, Counselor, and Social Activist.
Each of the six topic cards within a category has a brief comment about the specific issue and a creative activity associated with it.
These activities encourage children to express their own thoughts about the topics through creative exercises. Additional information in the Activity Guide helps moderators guide the children through the creative process. View sample activity

Resources :

Activity Guide
The Activity Guide is a how to resource. It provides instructions and guidance material for moderators. Detailed instructions on conducting creative activities for each topic, as well as information on facilitating design process workshops and brainstorming sessions are defined in this guide. The guide also describes ways in which the moderator can encourage the children to transform their knowledge in action.

Topic Resources
Each Topic Trigger is supplemented with additional reference and learning resources which are available on the Greenseeds website.

Topic Chart
The chart is a visual overview of all the categories and topics in the toolkit. It may be used by the moderator to help children build associations between topics and to understand how topics are related.

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Using the toolkit
Creative Cards activities utilize typical design processes such as creative expression and problem solving. The primary purpose of these exercises is to introduce children to new concepts. The creative activities allow children to connect to further research and learning, encourage taking action, have tangible or intangible deliverables, and are contained within a defined time-frame. Typical creative processes are further defined in the Activity Guide for moderators and facilitators.

View a sample creative activity

Types of creative activities

a. Individual activities that require no moderator intervention
Activities that define an independent role include self realization and artistic and creative expression. Examples - essay writing, painting etc. (learning/expressing)

b. Group activities that require minimum moderator intervention
Collaborative, group participation exercises include information gathering, role playing, story telling and information sharing. Examples - performances, information presentations - skits/plays and promotional advertisements etc.
(self realisation/sharing knowledge)

c. Group activities where the moderator is the facilitator and key initiator
Moderated activities include brainstorming, group participation, collaboration, information gathering and understanding context. Examples - generating context maps, strategic plans, conceptual solutions - models, charts, demos, petitions etc.
(learning, understanding, influencing)

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This activity involves the following design process steps :

Research and Discovery
Research is a critical part of the initial information gathering process for creative problem solving. In order to understand an issue, children are encouraged to learn more about the topic through research. Research may include reading articles in newspapers and magazines. Greenseeds provides online informational resources for each topic.

In this activity children may interview older female family members such as their grandmother, mother, aunts, etc. to learn about their experiences. How far did they go in their education? What opportunities were available to them? By talking to other women and girls they are able to discover first hand reports of personal stories.

Define the problem
Scenarios help define situations. Using the information gathered through researching the topic, the children may create a scenario describing a day in the life of a girl. Greenseeds provides sample scenario formats and examples to help moderators guide children through this process. These resources may be made available online or as part of the Activity Guide.

Brainstorm ideas
This is a phase in the creative process where a group might collectively share their ideas and concepts. Typical brainstorming techniques may be used to encourage children to share their thoughts, and propose ideas. Greenseeds provides guidelines for brainstorming and concept generation.

For this exercise, the brainstorming activities may include the following:
As a group, identifying the key issues that people need to understand about the importance of educating the girl child.
What do people need to know about the importance of educating women?
How does educating women impact society?
Think of ways in which to encourage educating girls.
Come up with a concept for the TV advertisement.

The above steps in the creative process encourage the following actions: Complete immersion, Analyzing and evaluating evidence, Being reflective and expressing emotions

Create solutions
Once the key issues have been identified and a concept has been selected for the final product, the children may write a script/storyline for the TV advertisement using the key points. Using the template and format guideline provided by Greenseeds, the script is transformed into a storyboard.

Deliver final product
The final stage in the process is to present the finished product. The children may present the finished storyboard to their classmates. Further sharing of knowledge may be enabled by facilitating a Question and Answer session where the children who participated in the creative exercise may share their knowledge with others.

These final steps in the creative process encourage: Conceptualizing Solutions, Sharing Knowledge, Informing and influencing others.

Immersive activities such as these engage children and empower their creativity which allows them to develop a better sensitivity towards their surroundings and encourages lifelong advocacy.

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Greenseeds aims to facilitate periodic competitions where some of the most compelling ideas submitted by the children may be selected to be published on the Greenseeds website. Greenseeds would also encourage further development of these concepts into actual products through the sponsorship of Schools, Industry, Government and other organisations.