Empowering Technologically-savvy Young People
Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam — 37 brilliant young people in 10 final outstanding social projects engaged in the fourth cohort of UPSHIFT Viet Nam with hopes to conquer the long-lasting challenges of their community and shape their path to success in a rapidly changing environment.
After three successful previous cohorts and changes in format leveraging the cohesion between members, the fourth-time UPSHIFT programme continued to reassert its slogan “By Youth For Youth” with more potential talents and innovative ideas. Since 2015, inspired by UNICEF Kosovo’s UPSHIFT, innovation specialists from UNICEF Viet Nam have partnered with Viet Youth Entrepreneurs (VYE), to strive for youth-led social impact through training workshops, financial resources, and mentorship.
4th cohort — Empowering Technological Innovation
“A techno lineup” is not too much of a word to describe the fourth cohort of UPSHIFT in Ho Chi Minh City as five out of 10 final projects were inspired by technological application. For example, a group of four high school students led by Manh Truong researched how to use brain waves to control prosthetic arms; another group brought the idea of an intelligent bracelet which can detect and send warning alert about epileptic seizures before it happens. It proved that technology was highly taken into consideration among Vietnamese youth as a powerful tool to help people with disabilities.
Amazed by the projects, Mr. Tran Cong Binh, a representative judge from UNICEF Viet Nam, said: “This year, we received a lot of projects which contained technological expertise. More surprisingly, all of those were conducted and developed by high school students. They all are very young and talented”.
Feet on the ground, head in the sky — Mentoring and Coaching
“One of the tasks of a mentor is to manage the expectations of the team members and sometimes give them a gentle reality check to make sure they don’t overstretch themselves’’ — Bui Thi Minh Chau, mentor of team X-generation. Every team is associated with one mentor and one supporter, who help them to improve their projects to make it practical and appealing in front of the judging panel. The mentors are young entrepreneurs, businessmen, social work specialists who come from non-profit organizations, private sectors and start-ups.
UPSHIFT Vietnam 2017 adapted the new business model “Lean Canvas” as a guideline for the teams to illustrate and develop their project. Answering key questions around areas such as running processes, cost structure, revenue streams, the model is helpful for young and ambitious participants to also consider practical application of their products.
Truong Bao Ngoc, leader of team X-generation shared: “UPSHIFT training helped to furnish our initial ideas and concepts. For example, we changed the target audience to reflect the vulnerabilities of difference age groups”.
Crowd Voting — It takes more than a judging panel to win
After two weekend-long workshops with intensive training and debates, young UPSHIFTers presented their ideas for social impact.
An interesting advancement in this version of UPSHIFT is crowd voting. Unlike previous years, a judging panel accounted for 75% of the total point, with the other 25% decided by round voting from participants themselves. Each member had three votes at their disposal. This gave a substantial advantage to the top three groups winning the crowd vote!
Five teams are now moving into incubation phase. Each team will receive $1,000 fund for launching the project in three months. After this period, five groups will gather at a reflection day and share what they have done and achieved through incubation. UNICEF and Viet Youth Entrepreneurs (VYE) committed to provide each group with extensive support on various aspects.
The most voted project was “Bus Yêu Thương” — delivered by a group of visually-impaired students. They built the project from their own experience to solve their community’s problem. Vo Dang Khoa (second from left), team leader, expressed a concern: “Visually-impaired people found it extremely hard to catch a bus because they were unaware when the bus was due to arrive. The bus driver sometimes did not care if there were blind people to slow down.” They wanted to use the available app for visually impaired people to be notified in advance increase the ease of independent travel.
Next — Finding accelerators for bigger impact
Young people and adolescents from Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, one of Asia’s fastest growing cities, are facing unprecedented opportunities to shape their path to success, but supporting and preparing them with the right environment, education and skills will be invaluable to them and the country.
UNICEF Viet Nam is looking at innovative solutions to amplify young people’s empowerment and foster their participation in the journey. Connecting U-Report and the UPSHIFT Program, engaging new partners and leverage the commitment from Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee to creating a Child Friendly City have been already identified as accelerators to drive change with and for young people.
If you know partners who might be interested in supporting this innovative programme further, we want to hear from you. Please get in touch!
For more details about UPSHIFT program, please visit:https://goo.gl/gfrA8h
