Have you ever wondered how the characters you enjoy so much come about? How much of their own self does each writer, designer, editor and animator put into bringing them to life? Or what long road they traveled before they came to you?
First dip
With thoughts of finding a creature to accompany the "Clean Water and Sanitation" books and guides for ages 11 to 14, regenÜrate's team of writers set to work: researching, gathering information, imagining activities. Expectations are set on the aquatic spider, the American salamander, the Hawaiian squid, and even a sperm whale, before thinking about the pink dolphin.
It is not a simple task, all beings have something to teach us and it is difficult to decide who will guide us in this adventure.
Some people think it could be a fish instead of a dolphin! The designers test and share their creations with the team to make a decision.
A good place to start
Once the pink dolphin is chosen, it is time to think of a name and we decided on Omacha, which is what it is called in the Tikuna language, the natives of the Amazon basin.
It's time to put all our energy into creating activities to learn by playing and experimenting. We weave Omacha with curious facts about her life, how she is affected by human activities and what we can do about it. We address transdisciplinary contents that link mathematics, science, art, language and other areas with creative, dynamic and innovative proposals applicable to everyday life, such as the filter for the reuse of gray water.
We want to awaken your empathy with each of Omacha's gestures so that you can reflect on how difficult it is for him to adapt to the impacts produced in his ecosystem:
Water itineraries
The 5 Missions come and go, from the writing department and its seasoning, to the editors, who lovingly review each paragraph and take care of the way they want to tell things. The whole team conspires to make Omacha more grounded and robust in its watery itinerary. For example, in Mission 2 they add the analysis of a water bill to bring statistics to everyday life, in Mission 4, a house plan drawing exercise to exercise spatial thinking and the unfolding of "seeing from above", which is important to explore water governance and aqueduct design, and in Mission 5 they choose to write a regenerative intro to bacteria telling how they feel the world and are fundamental to life.
In the design area, they are in charge of diagramming the whole activity book and give it magic with each illustration. We call this "mock-up". Three mock-ups are made, one in "non-binary" language, one in standard inclusive language and one translated into English. We are excited to think that we can be more and more!
Mirrors and water beings
We know that our greatest wealth lies in diversity. That is why we take care to check each activity so that it is inclusive and accessible. With Omacha we have taken our first steps: we have viewed our content with screen readers, solved access difficulties, added alternative texts to the images, tables and graphs, and we have made sure that the proposals are multisensory. We gained a very valuable experience that will be projected in everything we do from now on.
If you were to listen to this news with a reading tool, you would notice that behind Omacha's graphics you can find their description. Do you want to try?
Shared basin
To receive feedback and get to know your reality, we convened trainings and workshops where we put into practice all the contents and activities we thought of for this Goal. In January 2021, we met with King's Academy of Jordan, to offer a regenerative education course to their high school students, and in August of the same year we conducted a virtual training navigating with Omacha in the middle of a pandemic.
Reaching the open sea
The team makes printouts of the Activity Books and facilitator's guides. We don't want to miss any detail. We passionately review every page inhabited by Omacha. With it, we will present ourselves at the Colombian book fair, FILBO, in 2022. Each physical book has a QR code to access the impact evaluation and know the path of your learning, and also a digital version.
From the marketing department we create our first posts for social networks and videos to disseminate and promote Omacha's itineraries and make you want to join this regenerative community.
We subtitled the videos, added Omacha's voice, and he became our first animated water guardian!
Other water pirouettes
Now that you know everything there is behind Omacha, do you dare to create her aquatic family and share it in the comments?
You can draw her on paper or concrete material, take a photo, create digital content such as a video, song or sound story to introduce her, imagine the sound of her voices underwater or the slipperiness of her pink skin? Let's get to work! We need your collaboration to build a regenerated world.