Eight youngsters, three continents, a podcast and a hoodie. What’s the story?
It’s the first-ever episode of our new podcast series, Making of a Hoodie, and we celebrate some very special heroes: the Class of 2020, the kids at the frontline of the most complex revolution in educational delivery of the 21st century.
Making of Hoodie is a podcast where we meet with heroes from around the world – people who’ve gone out and done phenomenal things in small ways or in huge ways so we can be better together as humanity, people designing a world that’s fairer.
We hear their stories and reflect on the symbols and designs around us, on how we define ourselves, on breaking the mould. And together, they design a hoodie – a symbol of their story, of the story of what our lives can be. A hoodie that inspires us to reach for a fairer world.
Meet the Class of 2020 – a group of Year 12 students from Australia, India and Zimbabwe, the heroes of our debut episode.
We wanted to find out: How do you navigate this complicated reality that’s never been seen before? What opportunities have come out of it? How do you respond when your teacher breaks down in class? Can we ever stop learning? Does technology really mean progress? What colour can represent 2020, a year like no other? And if 2020 was a song, what would it be?
So we asked Kaiya Noble from New South Wales, Australia, Tahlia Dhu and Shyanne Southall from Western Australia, Conor Syron from South Australia, Charntel Machiwenyika from Mbare, Zimbabwe, Yohan Khan from Bombay, India, Kunal Chandirimani from Bhopal, India, and Brooke Hornery from Queensland, Australia.
Here are some of the insights, experiences and wisdom they shared with us.
“Humanity does exist, and there is that compassion between human beings… it’s just whether we wanna get over these societal constructs that we’ve created and these silly ideas we’ve instilled into the world.” – Kaiya Noble
“It’s this really weird atmosphere, you can feel it, it’s there and it’s not at the same time. You can’t help but feel out of place despite the fact that you’ve been doing the same thing for your last 12 years of schooling every single day.” – Conor Syron
“We’ve all learned quite a few lessons this year. One that’s really struck me is that it’s really imprudent to take anything for granted, anything at all, especially when you consider the prevalent and the frankly appalling inequalities that exist in every society… I think that in that sense there is a great degree of appreciation that’s required for what we have that we could just as well have been born without.” – Yohan Khan
“This year has had so many different elements, it’s been changing every single thing that we thought was constant… It’s been a time where you have to accept change because the moment you think one thing has changed and you get used to it, there’s another thing coming in.” – Kunal Chandirimani
“When we went back to school, teachers were more stressed because most of their planning for the year had been chucked out the window because of COVID so they were put under a lot of pressure and they sometimes broke down.” – Brooke Hornery
And then the Class of 2020 designed the first ‘hero hoodie’ of our podcast series, representing everything they’ve been through this year.
This hoodie is a conversation. It speaks to us, asks questions and lights up our imagination.
Internet is a human right. We imagine… Free WI-FI for all! Can we ever stop learning? Don’t take anything for granted. Are we happy? Some want to improve. I don’t think we really know what we want in life. I don’t think we can ever be truly satisfied. Want vs need. Positivity. Pastel chaos. Blue. Together.
This and every hoodie from the Making of a Hoodie series will help fire the work of AIME as we set our course to try to eradicate educational inequality across the Earth.
It is a hoodie that goes to building a fairer world, the one that we want and believe in. To unleashing imagination, the force that took us to the moon, inspired poets, and made us believe that everything is possible. To lighting up dreams in the hearts of kids around the world and unlocking their potential to make those dreams come true.
Know someone who’s graduated in 2020? Check out the Class of 2020 Hoodie and pre-order now as a gift for your graduate hero.
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