Fundación Cepsa presents First Lego League’s Innovative Solution Award
- The First Lego League (FLL) is an international competition that aims to spark children’s interest in science and technology
- The project, designed by the team called `RAnimal’s´from Rodríguez Alberto School, was selected as the winner in this category
- Fundación Cepsa is committed to promoting science and technology careers, which embodies the FLL’s core values
- Fundación Cepsa has partnered with the First Lego League (FLL) Canary Islands 2017: a program that uses challenges in different fields to encourage youngsters between the ages of six and 16 into scientific and technology careers. Cepsa has partnered on this project practically since it was launched in the archipelago, specifically over the last four editions.
For Cepsa’s director in the Canary Islands, José Manuel Fernández-Sabugo, who handed over the `Innovative Solution Award´ to the `RAnimal’s´ team, which represented Rodríguez Alberto School in Santa Cruz de Tenerife: “This is an especially interesting tournament for us, with which we have shared values. Year-after-year, it guides many youngsters towards the career they’ll choose in the future”. “Seeing over 400 kids taking part with such a spirit of team work, excitement, camaraderie and respect for the work of others is satisfying and encouraging,” said Cepsa’s representative.
Of the 38 teams taking part in this fifth edition of the tournament in the Canary Islands, `RAnimal’s´ stood out for its project “Canary Snail Dermatologist Center”. The solution involves setting up a skin treatment and beauty center offering therapies that use the Hemicycla Plicaria snail (a protected native species in the Canary Islands commonly known as the Chuchanga Corrugada or corrugated land snail) by directly placing the mollusk on a patient’s skin.
These treatments and products containing the snail’s secretions have beneficial effects on human skin, such as helping to slow aging and clearing up scars and acne.
As well as this project being the first of its kind in Europe, another key objective it fulfills concerns environmental and social responsibility, since the school children proposed that 25% of the snails reared on a farm would be used to repopulate the local ecosystem. This would enable the mollusc to be taken off the list of protected species in the Canary Islands.
This is an original, innovative (as the only project that is remotely similar is one in Japan) and viable (it would be self-funding through sales of the therapies and products obtained) solution that would solve a real problem. The children also produced a market survey to find out what potential customers thought of the treatments, and presented a description of the installations, a plan for funding, marketing and sales, a quality control strategy, an organizational chart and a financial plan.
Fundación Cepsa’s backing of the First Lego League Canary Islands underlines its pledge to promote science in education and contribute to fostering a culture of innovation and scientific careers through schools. Its aim is also to equip youngsters with skills and competencies such as the ability to work in a team, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and the ability to resolve scientific and technological problems in a fun way.
The FLL, organized in the Canary Islands by the Tenerife Science and Technology Park, fits perfectly with Fundación Cepsa’s mission to develop the knowledge and information society.
