Damola Idowu Leads the Toyz Electronics team with their MIT Solve solution
Vote for TOYZSTEAM Learn Today Earn Tomorrow which empowers students to become superhero versions of themselves using STEAM and Entrepreneurship with the Toyz Creators platform. Toyz Electronics is founded by the African American father-son duo of Damola and Wole Idowu. They are based at Carnegie Mellon University Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. They have empowered over 2000 TOYZSTEAM superheroes and are focused on building a more diverse and equitable workforce for the future. Their creator’s platform leverages superhero rap, game design, and a marketplace. The fun starts with the Dah-Varsity video game available on iOS and Android.
They also have their own courses, curriculum, and textbooks. There is even a textbook on hip-hop entrepreneurship. Students learn to create, sell, and tell stories of their own superhero toys. The team also includes; Drew Davidson the director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University serving as advisor. Nikolas Martelaro-Ph.D, an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon’s HCI Institute will help with measurements and evaluations of the project. Brett Ashley Crawford, Ph.D. who teaches in the graduate arts management program and directs the Arts Management and Technology Laboratory at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University serves as a consultant.
Below is information on how to vote for other finalists and details on the competition.
ANNOUNCING OUR 2021 FINALISTS:
VOTE + REGISTER FOR THE SOLVE CHALLENGE FINALS LIVESTREAM
As you know, we opened our 2021 Global Challenges and Indigenous Communities Fellowship earlier this year and received over 1,800 solutions from 128 countries.
We’re so excited to announce that our Challenge Leadership Groups have selected 88 finalists from 29 countries. You can vote for your favorites and read more about them here:
- Digital Inclusion Finalists
- Equitable Classrooms Finalists
- Resilient Ecosystems Finalists
- Health Security & Pandemics Finalists
- Antiracist Technology in the US Finalists
- Indigenous Communities Fellowship Finalists
You can register today to join the livestream of Virtual Solve Challenge Finals on September 17, where we will announce which finalists will join the next class of Solver teams and receive over $2 million in funding. It’s also not too late to become a Member to join us for the full Solve Challenge Finals event—find out more here.
Now it’s time to vote for your favorite finalists! The finalist from each Challenge with the most votes will receive a $2,000 Community Award which will be announced during Solve Challenge Finals. To do so:
- Log in or create an account at solve.mit.edu/login.
- Select a finalist at solve.mit.edu/finalists.
- Press the “Vote Now!” button at the top of the finalist’s page.
- Share this with your network to vote as well!
Voting closes September 17 at 1:30pm ET and users may only vote once per finalist.
Thanks to our partners and prize funders: General Motors, Comcast NBCUniversal, the Morgridge Family Foundation, Vodafone Americas Foundation, HP, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Elevate Prize Foundation, American Student Assistance, The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, GSR, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Global Fund, Andan Foundation, Minderoo, and Service Now.