Mumbai students win 'Enable Makeathon 2.0'

Mumbai students have emerged as winners for their innovative solution for the hearing-impaired at the second edition of "Enable Makeathon" -- an intensive innovation programme organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"Enable Makeathon" aims to develop prototypes and affordable solutions for challenges faced by persons with disabilities, particularly those living in rural areas.

'Team Bleetech', who were declared winners from over 100 teams worldwide, were also awarded $25,000 for their innovative technology that would help people with hearing impairment to ask questions in sign language using their phones and receive responses.

"This has been a very special day for us. We are so honoured to have been able to develop a product that is at its core a social innovation," 'Team Bleetech' said.

"'Enable Makeathon' is a unique social movement. It brings together a multidisciplinary team of experts with persons with disability to find solutions for the real challenges that they would like to address," Tarun Sarwal, Head of Innovation, ICRC said in a statement.

"Through the 'Enable Makeathon Challenge', we wanted to provide a platform for innovators to use their expertise in building assistive locomotive devices that would help people with disabilities living in rural India," Sarwal added.

In "Enable Makeathon" teams of engineers, scientists, designers, innovators, persons with disabilities, humanitarians, manufacturers, investors and entrepreneurs compete against each other for grants that will allow them to further develop and market their innovations.

For "Enable Makeathon 2.0", 15 teams were selected for the co-creation phase from the top 23 that came from a pool of nearly 100 high quality applications from across the globe.

--IANS

rt/qd/bg