KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Future City Competition challenges middle school students to solve a current problem with a future solution.
East Tennessee students won a state competition to create a city of the future. Public, private and home schools across Tennessee participated.
They had to choose a real city facing a crisis now then figure out solutions for the future.
The team of six students at Annoor Academy chose to focus on the plight of children in Morungatuny, Uganda walking long distances for water.
"I felt so thankful that we have clean water. And I also feel very bad for that little girl who has to walk so long just for dirty, contaminated water," Samia Khan said.
The students built a model of an imagined future version of the city in 2150.
Jowan Bargoty
Samia Khan
Layann Tumazeh
Layla Abdul-Razacq
Ashar Khan
Aya Chergui
The Future City Competition for middle school students sets strict standards for the projects: focus on clean water, use mostly recycled material, cost less that $100, build to scale, feature moving parts.
Building their Future City took months of research, input from engineering experts, and weeks of perfecting a script for a presentation.
"I loved seeing it form and when it was done I was so happy because it looked like I imagine it to look," Jowan Bargoty said.
After winning the competition in Tennessee the team from Annoor Academy traveled to Washington DC for Nationals last month. While they didn't win a trophy there, they still learned a lot.
"I didn't even know there was a country called Uganda so I learned a lot of things," Layann Tumazeh said. "There's all these things to learn about and all these things to discover, research and find solutions for."
They built a city and built their confidence and will certainly have bright futures themselves.