Dialog Enterprise, the corporate solutions arm of Dialog Axiata PLC, recently recognized Gateway College as a ‘Dialog DigiEdu Model School’. Gateway InnovaThon is the very first initiative through this partnership, where winners from Gateway will be eligible to participate at future National and International App Challenges.
Through this novel social innovation competition, Dialog Axiata PLC will encourage young entrepreneurs to develop innovative solutions to solve social and environmental challenges. The competition goes beyond simply offering prize money and includes non-financial support in the form of business accelerator services through training, mentoring and coaching.
The competition open to all Gateway Colleges from Years 3 to 13 (Ages from 7+ to 17+) has already attracted over 700 participants. Students take part in teams of 2 to 4 in two categories: World Citizenship where they develop technology solutions to contribute to the community through a particular service and Gaming Category where they ideate a game to solve a problem.
During the first briefing students of all five Gateway Colleges were introduced to the concept of social innovation and how it can help smart generations to explore newer effective solutions or advance existing solutions to better versions. The ongoing competition has had over 250 entries and Dialog is set to announce the shortlisted teams after a rigorous screening process. These teams will then be mentored and coached by the Ideamart and Innovation Foundry teams to polish their ideas into fruition and enter the Finals of the competition in November. The selected solutions will be nurtured to Go-To-Market (G2M) through Dialog’s Innovation Foundry and Ideamart so that the winning teams can pitch their ideas to the world. Dialog and Gateway hope to announce the winners at an Awards Ceremony that will be held at the end of the year.