KUWAIT: A team of students from the Australian College of Kuwait (ACK) won third place in the "Universities Entrepreneur Battle" organized by the Minister of Youth Affairs for their project idea, which sought to help ease the daily lives of the blind.
The Universities Entrepreneur Battle was organized by the Ministry of Youth Affairs for university students in Kuwait in order to support and develop youth skills in various fields and highlight their creative abilities in creating ideas for projects that can benefit society. The competition consisted of 18 teams from seven different universities who put forth their ideas for projects that can have a positive societal impact.
The ACK team united two students, Nujoud Al-Azmi and Nour Al-Mutairi and presented their project entitled "Speaking Map for the Blind". The objective of the project sought to ease burdens of the blind by giving them greater accessibility to public areas with a map that speaks directions to them.
The project also included a small wireless earphone that accepts voice commands so it can be activate and useful by voice alone. A further benefit is that the program can be used in government sector buildings in order to give users greater accessibility when conducting their necessary transactions.
Worth mentioning that the project could be executed internationally and according to the estimation of the students it would take 17 months to create and implement, and would cost roughly 50,000 Kuwaiti Dinars to produce.
The Ministry of Youth Affairs announced the winners on Instagram during a live session. Where Hussain Al-Haddad, Manager of Student Affairs at ACK, attended representing the College. Haddad congratulated the participants for their efforts and thanked the Ministry of Youth Affairs for giving students across Kuwait such a great opportunity to improve their skills and benefit their community.
Further elaborating on the benefits of competition to students, Haddad said "The spirit of competition is effective in fostering students' characters, and the constructive use of their abilities works excellently to benefit them personally while also benefiting society as a whole."