Based in Germany, ODE [ōdiː] Objectified Decision Engine focuses on the education of children, adolescents and young adults by providing a self-learning, digital support tool for educators.
Decision-making skills are essential to enable young people to build resilience for their future life and work decisions. But making decisions is not easy without guidance. Parents and educators often struggle to find the right intervention measures that can help.
With our process and the ODE app, we use decision-making skills as an important part of empowerment / resilience training. Our bottom-up approach is like throwing a stone in the water, enabling people to use their own experience in personal decision-making to strengthen more and more meaningful participation. We like to think of it as democracy development turned upside down – grounded and without pointing fingers.
Social entrepreneurs are known for finding solutions for society’s problems. What is the problem that you are addressing, and what is your solution?
We have seen how often students suffer from the inability to make decisions. Often they put off making decisions for their educational or professional future. They are beset by questions for which they have no answers: What do I want to become? How public should my social media profile be? Do I want to play football with friends in a club or participate in a school project? Should I get involved in climate protection? Where should I volunteer? How can I realise my dream?
The ODE app was developed, based on experience working with pupils, students and young professionals and the team’s quantitative and qualitative surveys with four international universities.
The app provides a safe, digital tool for pedagogical work to strengthen the personal development of students and promote their resilience. The digital training support tool (also available in the App Store and Google Play Store) follows a linear, iterative approach and can be used in analogue, digital and hybrid lessons as well as in extracurricular projects.
What do you see as the benefit of your Catalyst 2030 membership?
Discussing and working on issues of relevance and impact with like-minded members of C2030 gives us stability and mental support as well as the opportunity to network for scale and synergies. Working towards systems change is a challenge and not always rewarded positively. C2030’s group dynamic and shared experience supports our mental health – we simply know that we all face problems that can be overcome. One voice, one decision is easily ignored. However, many meaningful voices and many decisions will make a difference.
We hope to repay the empowerment, strength and experience we got from the discussion and talks within the C2030 community to others within the network and to work together towards a world where we all have a voice.