GP announces finalists to represent Bangladesh at the Telenor Youth Summit 2014

DHAKA, Nov. 7 (NsNewsWire) — In order to select two youngsters to represent Bangladesh at the Telenor Youth Summit in Norway, Grameenphone has conducted a contest for all youth between 18 to 25 years of age.
The grand finale of the competition was held Friday at The Radisson Blu Water Garden in Dhaka.
After the final jury round of this contest, called “Digital Maduli: Keeping kids safe near water”, Grameenphone or GP has announced the two winners.

Ashrarul Haq Sifat of Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology and Nowshin Mehzabin Chowdhury of North South University were declared as the finalists for their innovative ideas.

Education Secretary NI. Khan was present as chief guest and distributed prizes with Grameenphone CEO Vivek Sood and Chief Human Resources Officer Quazi Mohammad Shahed.

The idea titled “Digital Maduli: Keeping kids safe near water” presented by Ashraful Haq Sifat, focuses on drowning prevention for the children. Based on a geographical information system and a low-cost wearable child monitoring device with SIM card integration, geo-location signal will be sent to the parents and local rescuers with specific directions to the victim’s position. The idea also preaches to convince capable parents to buy one for them and sponsor one child in the village where situations are dire.

Nowshin Mehzabin Chowdhury presented her idea titled “First Lady: Ensuring a safe society for women” through which indoor and outdoor violence against women. This service requires every woman to be registered with their personal data through which there will be a dialog project between the user and the local authority on a monthly basis. Failure to do so will result in the helpline service calling the user to get assurance of her current situation. Apart from that the app will have specific function through which a distress signal can be sent to the relevant authority.

The three staged competition started from August, 2014 with winners from different universities progressing to the second round. With the completion of the second round, 4 finalists had progressed to the grand finale. The winners of the finale will visit Oslo on Norway to compete in a global platform sharing their innovative ideas. The winners will also get to attend the Nobel Prize giving ceremony.

The four finalists of this year were Nowshin Mehzabin Chowdhury of North South University, Ashrarul Haq Sifat of BUET, Parashar Saha of IBA (DU) and Ahmed Istehad Shoumik of IBA (DU).

Three judges of the final event were Erlend Prestgard, Chief Strategy Officer of Grameenphone, Russell T. Ahmed, CEO Champs21 and Mridul Chowdhury, CEO and Founder of mPower Social Enterprises.

Last year Safa Tasneem and Sami Tahsin of IBA, Dhaka University won the local contest of Telenor Youth Summit and represent Bangladesh in the first Youth Summit event held in Oslo.

With the core inspiration of engaging the youth to explore ideas to bring social change and creating opportunities for all with the help of digital communication, the competition invited university students to present their innovative ideas related to technology. Using digital communication technology for positive social changes is part of Telenor Group’s ambition to provide “Internet for All” in the countries where it operates. Through “Internet for All,” Telenor aims to make knowledge, information, education, healthcare and financial services easily available for the people.

Telenor youth summit is a flagship project of Telenor Group, the majority shareholder of Grameenphone which harnesses education and development for the youth.