Telenor Group will give the winning team USD 15,000 in funding to implement their proposed service, with an aim to reduce inequalities among and within countries in accordance with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Before the finals in Bangkok, the delegates have spent six months developing their service ideas, conducting user research and prototyping their services. Hungarian delegates Gréta Baukó and Máté Mátyás were members of two different teams, Digiu and Edentify supporting their peers and developing their ideas to reduce inequalities.
The Digiu team was challenged to make the internet a safe place for youth. From cyberbullying to targeted child sexual abuse, our youth might be exposed to various forms of online perils. Team Digiu developed the concept of an AI-based chatbot that makes it easy for young people to use the internet safely and gives them a platform to get answers to their questions.
Recalling her memories of the months of preparation, Gréta Baukó said: “Six-member teams were set up and the tasks were assigned to the teams at the beginning of an eventful week in Oslo last December. We decided to develop a website providing information on online threats to children and parents and enabling children to become ‘digital heroes’ able to address the challenges of the online world. The concept is innovative because children can share their problems with a chatbot that points them to potential solutions based on specific keywords. We promote engagement through gamified rewards. We plan to launch an English-language pilot in Malaysia.”
Team Edentify tackled the topic of birth registration and digital identity. Their concept aims to provide digital identity to 1.1 billion people in the world including nearly 170 children under five. The team’s idea is based on an SMS-based fundraising campaign run jointly with a mobile operator that lets mobile users pledge their mobile credit to a parent in need to pay for their new-born child’s registration.
Máté Mátyás, Hungarian member of team Edentify, said the following about his participation at Telenor Youth Forum: “I’m very much looking forward to meeting my team and working together at the same site again in Bangkok. During Telenor Youth Forum, I met inspiring young people you seldom come across in your life. We were brainstorming a lot and developed Edentify’s concept for a good cause working hard in our team. Telenor Youth Forum gave me the inspiration to build a similar community back home and promote the development of a fairer, more equal and more sustainable society also in Hungary.”
The other two teams were given similar challenges. Team Agncy developed a digital platform allowing the employees of a company to report potential labour violations in a safe and anonymous way. Team BD4 developed a data analytics project predicting how infectious diseases spread based on mobile users’ metadata. Combining healthcare and telecommunications data, an accurate epidemiology model can be developed for the authorities to take timely preventive action, e.g. before the outbreak of a malaria epidemic.
More information: www.telenor.com/youthforum, Instagram, Facebook