Using the lesson slides, show students this image of members of Myanmar's Rohingya ethnic minority walking through rice fields after crossing the border into Bangladesh (or choose an image of your choice depicting a current refugee crisis)

• Ask students to examine the photograph and jot down what they see, who they see, and what they think is going on in this picture.
• Have students share their thoughts and observations with the class, or turn and share with a partner
• Reveal the true story behind this photograph: “This photograph shows members of Myanmar's Rohingya ethnic minority walking through rice fields after crossing the border into Bangladesh near Cox's Bazar's in the Teknaf area. It was taken on September 5, 2017.”
  

Set the stage for what students will be learning today. Key points to mention are:

• Fridjtof Nansen began his career as a scientist and polar explorer.
• Later, he would use his position and fame to promote social and political causes.
• His crowning achievement was the Nansen passport, which allowed refugees to travel across borders, as they could now prove their identity.
  

Show students this 6-minute TED-Ed video, “What does it mean to be a refugee?”

Use the lesson slides to introduce Nobel Laureate Fridtjof Nansen to students.

• Nansen developed a program to address a social cause—refugee rights.
• Organizations that are developed to address social causes, such as hunger, poverty, the environment, are sometimes called a “social enterprise.”
• The people who start these social enterprises are called “social entrepreneurs.”
• Nansen was a social entrepreneur, because he created the Nansen Passport not to earn profit, but solely to address a problem in the world he saw needed action, and directly to help and improve the lives of other people.

After watching the video and learning about Nansen, ask students:

• How would you describe each of the following terms in your own words: “migrant,” “refugee,” “asylum”
• Where are current refugee crises in the world today? Who is being affected, why, and what is being done?
• Explain: Nansen developed a program to address a social cause--refugee rights. Organizations that are developed to address social causes, such as hunger, poverty, the environment, are sometimes called a “social enterprise.” The people who start these social enterprises are called “social entrepreneurs.” Nansen was a social entrepreneur, because he created the Nansen Passport not to earn profit, but solely to address a problem in the world he saw needed action, and directly to help and improve the lives of other people.

Set the Stage: Ask students to imagine that a war breaks out where they live and that they live in an area with heavy fighting. What would they do? Ask student to take a moment to think about it but keep the thoughts to themselves for now.

Play Four Corners:

Place signage up in four corners of the room with the following statements:

• I would stay here and hope for the best.
• I would flee to a neighboring country.
• I would stay but move to another part of the country that is further away from the fighting.
• I would flee faraway to a safe country.

• Repeat the scenario and ask students to move to the corner of the room that states what they think they would do in the event of war. Remind students that there are no wrong answers.
• Once students have decided where they would go and move to their chosen corner ask them to think about what they chose this option. Have students turn and talk to a classmate to share their thinking. Ask each group to explain their reasoning.
• Once each group has shared its point of view, make sure the students notice the distribution among the groups. Count out loud how many students are in each group. Is one group larger than the others? Is one much smaller? Do they think this distribution is representative of the reality?
• Change the scenario and play a few more times. Consider variables such as the lack of identity papers, lack of resources (money, transportation, etc), family considerations, etc.
• Follow each round with a discussion about why students made the choices they made.

There are millions of refugees in the world today struggling for the right to asylum and freedom of movement. While the Nansen Passport program ended in 1938, Nansen’s work was a significant milestone in the fight for refugee rights. As Dorothy Thompson, a journalist in 1938 wrote, “ There is no doubt that by and large, the Nansen certificate is the greatest thing that has happened for the individual refugee [...] it returned his lost identity.”

• What is your greatest takeaway from today’s lesson on Nansen and what he did for refugees?
• What is one question you still have about Nansen or refugee rights today?
  

• Article: “Social Entrepreneurship: 7 Ways to Empower Student Changemakers”
• Article: “People Without Papers”

Inspired by how Fridtjof Nansen and the Nansen Passport helped refugees gain safety and asylum, students will use the design process to develop a product or service that helps solve a problem (not make money) as social enterprises do. Feel free to tailor this experience to meet the needs and interests of your students, retaining following essential elements:

1. Students should develop a product or service that helps address a real-world issue and social cause.
2. Their focus should be on developing solutions to help people affected by a social issue they feel most passionate about addressing.
3. Students should follow the 5 steps in the design process to guide their design challenge.

WHAT CAN THIS LOOK LIKE?

• Students can work individually, with a partner, or in a small group
• This design challenge can be done in the classroom, as part of an after school club or project, or a combination of at home and in-school work
• You can make this design challenge as small or large scale as you’d like, and complete it in a couple of weeks (dedicating one day to each of the stages of the design process below) or extend it to a month or semester.
• Steps in the design process:
• Step 1: Empathize
• Step 2: Define the problem
• Step 3: Ideate
• Step 4: Prototype
• Step 5: Test

(students should be encouraged to return to any of the above steps to continue problem solving and iterating until they’ve found an effective and sustainable way to take action)

What is Social Entrepreneurship?
Social entrepreneurs care about improving something for the greater good—it might be starting a school for young children in an impoverished area who don’t have access to a good education; or it could be inventing a better way to bring clean water to a community in need. Social entrepreneurs are not primarily interested in starting a company to sell things and make money. They want to help people, or the environment, or something that will benefit the world or a community.

Materials:

• Notebook or paper for brainstorming
  

Steps:

• Ask students to brainstorm topics that they care about that they want to explore. Examples might be safety, health, or the environment
• Once they have a list of topics, students can start to think about the issues that exist around those topics. Examples: climate change and human impact on the environment; access to healthy food in poor communities; access to clean water; access to quality health care

Steps:

1. Review the student worksheet for this step in the design process.
2. Explain to students that in this step of the design process, they will need to learn as much as they can about the people most directly affected by this social issue.
3. Students can learn more about their selected issue by doing “research,” that can take any of the following forms:

• Field trips
• Reading
• Online research
• Conducting or listening to interviews
• Watching documentaries
• Listening to podcasts
• Exploring social media from trusted sources

Once your students have spent time learning about the first-hand experiences of people affected by the issue they chose, it’s time to have them narrow down the issue to identify one problem they want to address.

By the end of this step, the goal is that students have a specific and clear problem statement that will guide the rest of their Design Challenge.

Steps:

1. Review the student worksheet for this step in the design process.

2. Before students can identify solutions, they first need to figure out what problem they’d like to solve.

• Have students go back to their list of topics and issues.
• See if they can get as specific as possible with the problems they would like to solve. It may benefit them to do some research around the topics they are passionate about to learn more.
• They can brainstorm a list of problems or do word webs/concept maps.
• Once they have identified problems, they should pick their top 3-4 ideas and identify the customers, or audience for the problem they are solving.

3. In addition to the student worksheet, you may have students use any of the following additional strategies to help them define the problem and create their problem statement:

• Peer discussion
• Journaling
• List making
• Drawing
• Idea mapping
• Sharing possible actions with people affected by the problem (if possible) for feedback

Now that your students have selected one specific problem and crafted a problem statement, they are ready to have some fun coming up with ideas for their social enterprise!

Steps:

1. Review the student worksheet for this step in the design process.
2. As students ideate encourage them to be bold, creative and unafraid of listing as many possible ideas as they have to complete this challenge. Let them dream big and go for quantity - the more ideas the better!
3. This is a good opportunity to remind students about what it means to be a social entrepreneur and what a social enterprise is (see part 1 of this Design Challenge).
4. Have students go back to their list of problems. Ask them to brainstorm solutions and then narrow in on the one they think may be the best. They can share their ideas with each other, and other people they know to get feedback—is this a viable solution to the problem I’m trying to help solve?

• Optional: have students watch this TED Talk about digital passports here.

In this stage of the design process, students will create a quick model that can demonstrate the essential components of the product or service their social enterprise will provide, and get feedback on the value it adds or problem it helps solve.

Steps:

1. Review the student worksheet for this step in the design process.
2. Remind students that a prototype is meant to be created quickly so they can test and get feedback on their idea in the next step of the design process. Explain to students:

• Prototyping is a way of being more efficient and effective.
• It allows them to better understand if they have come up with a solution that meets the needs of their target user, how it could be better, or to try a completely new idea before they put in the time and effort of creating a fully developed product or service.
  

Once your students have developed their prototype, it’s time to share it with others for feedback! Ideally your students will be able to test their prototype with their target users. If this is not possible, the next best option is to have them get feedback from people outside their classmates—other members of the school community, local community, or local experts in the field.

Steps:

1. Review the student worksheets for this step in the design process.
2. Help students connect with an appropriate audience to gather feedback.
3. Work together to brainstorm questions students should ask during this test phase that will help them gather specific information they can do something productive with. For example, instead of asking “do you like this?” students could ask a series of more targeted questions like “What do you like about this?”, “What don’t you like about this?”, “Is this useful or helpful to you? How so?”, etc.

Celebrate your students' hard work and achievements! Consider having a class celebration where students or groups can share the story of the journey they took in this design challenge. Invite others to come and look, listen, and ask questions. Remind your students (and any invited audience) that this Design Challenge was not simply a “school project,” but rather the same exact process designers, engineers, scientists, and many others use in the real world every day to develop solutions to complex challenges.

Read more here about social entrepreneurship.

• Read more here about problems and solutions.
• Write a Problem Statement (teacher and student resource)
• The Design Thinking Process
• https://www.nfte.com/free-resources/ (student entrepreneurship)
• https://www.teachersguild.org/approach (design thinking)