Education Award iGEM 2022 | Wageningen University & Research

Introduction

In our project, we had the goal to share knowledge and engage with two groups that usually have minimal interaction with synthetic biology, namely lower income families and young people. People from lower socioeconomic groups are often more difficult to reach and share knowledge on a developing field like synthetic biology. This is why, we wanted to combine one of their interests with our field. We chose to do this with cooking. We created a cookbook with healthy, easy, and affordable recipes, to allow everyone to have a healthy diet. Additionally, we carefully selected recipes that help reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. Besides that, information about macronutrients, cancer and a healthy lifestyle was included to educate people on how and why they should live healthily. The cookbook was made in collaboration with the BalanceBuddy foundation, which supports overweight children and their families to create a healthy lifestyle. Additionally, two nutrition and health experts advised us and validated the complete book.

Educational platform

By creating this cookbook and collaborating with BalanceBuddy, we created an ideal platform to interact about synthetic biology with a lower socioeconomic group. We did this, by introducing our project in the book, which we then used as an example to inspire the audience about the possibilities of synthetic biology. To promote our platform, we organized a book launch, where we invited a cancer expert to speak about the importance of nutrition in relation to cancer. Our team spoke about the cookbook, but also about synthetic biology. We gave a short presentation about our project and how synthetic biology enabled us to create a tool like our living diagnostic. This knowledge could help the audience to form an opinion about our project. Additionally, we had a discussion hour after the presentation, where the audience were able to view our book and try some healthy snacks. We also gave them the opportunity to share their thoughts on our project or synthetic biology. Finally, we made our cookbook open access to reach as many people as possible. We distributed it through both the BalanceBuddy network and our own, in English and in Dutch. We included our contact information in case people have more questions or want to openly discuss certain matters. We hope to inspire as many families as possible about the possibilities of synthetic biology.

English

Dutch

Young people interaction

Furthermore, for young people we set up a series of lectures and workshops, tailored to each step of the Dutch educational system. We believe that curiosity is key in education. Therefore, by creating several workshops, we wanted to arouse the curiosity of young people, about the field of synthetic biology, as early as possible. Further information about this, can be found on our Communication & education page.