This year, our education initiative set out with one main goal: to reach more than 20,000 people with our educational programme . At the end of it, we had carried out +30 visits, which had a direct reach of almost 19,756 people.
We began our journey with a question: how much do people know about asthma and synthetic biology? To find out, we launched a survey. The results revealed clear gaps in awareness for both topics ( one for synbio, one for asthma). That was the turning point where we decided to design activities that would close these gaps.
The survey also highlighted specific groups at higher risk of asthma, such as workers in certain occupations and hospital patients. The team outreached +10 of the high risk occupations and +5 health associated foundations such as hospitals and pharmacies in our region.We gave special attention to them, offering targeted outreach and prevention strategies suited to their environments. Since asthma is also highly prevalent among children, we developed resources for families—recognizing that parents are usually the first caregivers at home. For this reason, we created a parent guidebook, a child book, and even instructions on managing pet-related triggers. This is detailed in the “ focused outreach group”.
We based our plan on three important pillars: synthetic biology, essential skills, and awareness of asthma. All our activities were also tailored to the age group we were dealing with—ranging from young children in kindergartens to the geriatrics and public.
To make learning more effective, we often ran two parallel events: one introducing synbio concepts and essential skills, and the other focused on asthma prevention and management. Additionally, we had to address policymakers with our approach to open their horizon to the new field of synthetic biology and its therapeutic applications.
To bring these ideas to life, we relied on more than just lectures. We used interactive methods— workshops, exercises, and innovative tools like songs, graphic novels, mobile games, card games, and posters. They not only enhanced the sessions but also ensured longer longevity of the lessons.
We also depended on our social media platforms with an educational video and a podcast ensuring wider outreach. This podcast is with English, French, Deutsch, Espanol, and Chinese subtitles. In addition to that, we translated our asthma guidebook, and children's story into Arabic, English, and Greek through a collaboration with the IGEM Ionana team, for wider impact.
While doing this, we connected our work to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 15 (Life on Land), emphasizing the broader extent of our work.
At the end of the journey, the team represented “How education Shaped PRESS”, a clear section discussing how every step through the educational program participated in designing and shaping PRESS as a product. We also present some quotes with feedback throughout all our activities and events. It was our motive to continue the road with passion and faith.
For every event, we captured three elements:
Overview – a summary of the event and its activities.
Why it matters - the importance of introducing this event.
Impact on us – the lessons we shared, what we learned in return, and how the experience helped shape the direction of our project.
Impact on them - what is gained by the targeted audience through all the activities we conducted, with a graph representing pre and post effect on their knowledge.
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