The Swarovski Foundation held its 2025 Creatives for Our Future ceremony, celebrating its fourth cohort of youth innovators at the United Nations headquarters on Thursday, April 24.
The Creatives for Our Future program, created by the Swarovski Foundation in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Partnerships, recognizes the creativity and designs of six young people, ages 21-30, worldwide for their sustainable solutions to global inequalities. It awards them €20,000 each – approximately 22,830 USD – to continue their efforts, along with professional mentorship and educational support for a year.
“It’s great to know someone believes in my idea,” said 23-year-old Indonesian product designer and fourth cohort member, Azra Firmansyah.
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Firmansyah’s design, Svaika, is a wearable device allowing deaf individuals to experience music by transforming audio signals into physical vibrations. Through touch, users can feel rhythms and beats, allowing them to enjoy the musical experience.
He said that with the financial support from the Swarovski Foundation, he could take his design from a prototype to a tangible solution for those who need it.
“I’ve been working on this for my final year university thesis for one year, and I have virtually very limited funding. So back then I could only present to my professor in university a proof of concept, and a dummy model,” he said. “I really believe [with Swarovski funding] I can make this happen by the end of this program.”
Svaika, wearable sensory hearing device prototype by Azra Firmansyah (Photo courtesy of Swarovski) Credit: (Photo courtesy of Swarovski) 
Blossom Eromosele poses next to AllSpace Modular Home unit (Photo courtesy of Swarovski) Credit: (Photo courtesy of Swarovski) 
Azra Firmansyah, 23, creator of Svaika (Photo courtesy of Swarovski) Credit: (Photo courtesy of Swarovski) 
Blossom Eromosele, 23, architect and designer, founder of AllSpace (Photo courtesy of Swarovski) Credit: (Photo courtesy of Swarovski) 
Blossom Eromosele gives speech at 2025 Creatives for Our Future ceremony (Photo credits: Leah Mallory) Credit: (Photo credits: Leah Mallory)
The idea, he said, came from his love for languages. Firmansyah learned Indonesian sign language, allowing him to network and connect with deaf friends, who often lack sufficient support and visibility in the country, he said.
He plans to involve them in every step of the design process.
“This is where I try to contribute to elevating their voices and their stories and everything because, well, this needs to be brought to attention. They are a cultural group, not just a condition. It’s a culture. They all have their own language,” he said. “I want them to try on and test [Svaika], see what they hear, and see the feedback, and hopefully it can improve the design of the project.”
23-year-old architect and designer Blossom Eromosele from Nigeria, also a part of the 2025 cohort, was awarded for her AllSpace Modular Homes. The solar-powered housing units, modeled after traditional African huts, are crafted from recycled materials and provide shelter to refugees.
Currently, Eromosele said she is focusing her efforts on northern Nigeria, an area facing conflict and housing insecurity. She has already developed multiple units, but the funding from the Swarovski Foundation would enable her to create more.
“We want to see how we can have a community of sustainable homes. We want to give these people more than just a house — we want to give them a community,” she said. “We plan to extend to small models of about eight to ten, like small clusters. Doing that, we have a prototype of what a small community can be.”
She shared that growing up, her family struggled with access, and that she frequently witnessed people sleeping in the streets.
“I’m like, in a world that has so much extraordinary architecture, why do so many lack even the most basic shelter and a roof over their heads?” she said.
Motivated by her childhood experience, she chose to study architecture in school. A few years later, she launched her company, AllSpace, to address the housing and refugee crises.
“I mean, having to lose everything in the blink of an eye is nothing anyone plans for, but the least we can do for them is give them a space where they can start from all over again,” she said.
Other projects within the cohort included transforming ocean waste into sustainable textiles and utilizing plants on polluted land to create natural dyes.
Jakhya Rahman-Corey, director of the Swarovski Foundation in London, explained that they have three pillars of focus for advancing sustainability: equity, water, and creativity. The Creatives for our Future, she said, is meant to target the efforts of younger creators in those areas, reducing obstacles to the creativity industry.
“We thought — who is hard hit in this situation? It’s the young creatives,” she said. “But we realize barriers aren’t just financial — it’s who you know, it’s your network, it’s mentoring, it’s all of that.”
The six cohort members were selected from nearly 500 applicants worldwide.
“That just shows the appetite,” said Rahman-Corey.
Over the next year, the winners will be paired with mentors and participate in online master classes until they graduate from the program in April 2026.