Hello, world! Welcome to our first official blog post! 

We are genuinely excited to kick-start documenting our journey of navigating tasks and challenges related to Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG 12). Over the past few weeks, we’ve had the opportunity to get to know each other better through team-building exercises and our first official assignment: creating Opportunity and Tech Cards. Opportunity cards highlight problems that our team identified in conjunction with SDG 12, while Tech cards focus on Attract Technologies, which we are eager to explore further during our time at IdeaSquare CERN.

The primary issues we’ve identified related to SDG 12 include but are not limited to concerns about excessive packaging, food waste, and challenges within the construction industry. However, these problems were rather general and not explicitly applicable to Mannheim, Germany. Before diving into actual research, we gathered as a team to brainstorm problems off the top of our heads that we believed correlated with SDG 12. Subsequently, we initiated our research journey, starting with the UN.org page dedicated to SDG 12 and expanding our search to include newspaper articles and reports to gather accurate statistics. In the upcoming weeks at IdeaSquare CERN, our goal is to narrow down these issues to be specific to Mannheim and to delve into local sources and publications for a more nuanced understanding.

Today’s featured quote is:

“Put more hot glue on it!”

One of the team-building activities that brought us closer involved constructing a part of a Rube Goldberg Machine with the end goal of turning on an elevator and eventually turning on a lamp switch. Our section of the machine was decidedly rustic, down-to-earth, and back-to-basics, with most components made from cardboard and held together by duct tape and, of course, our star player, hot glue. Throughout the assembly process, there were moments when things seemed to fall apart, and our go-to solution quickly became, “put more hot glue on it.” This phrase soon became our team motto as we realized that, much like hot glue, a flexible and open-minded approach can fix any problem and securely hold things together.

This is the mindset we aim to bring to our project. We believe that with open minds and adaptability, we can overcome challenges and ultimately bridge any gaps.

Warm regards from rainy Mannheim,

Hnudee, Kasjen, and Katharina