Youth Challenge global finalists
Meet 32 teams of young innovators with exciting ideas for education, skills and empowerment.
The Generation Unlimited Youth Challenge has supported more than 800 young people across 16 countries to create their own solutions to the challenges in their lives.
The following teams developed the best ideas in their countries, received a small grant and mentorship, and progressed to the global finals of the Youth Challenge.
Each team has shown incredible insight, creativity and determination to unlock opportunities for their generation.
Brazil
Produção PRETA - Imersão Audiovisual
Anderson, Gabriel and Erick.
"Our project aims to empower and train socially vulnerable youth through audiovisual so that they can see in this tool a means of working or generating income. Our group aims to create space and visibility for black people, people from the LGBTQ+ community and people from the periphery of São Paulo. This project is about fostering youth empowerment, helping them understand that they have a voice.”
CIJoga - Caravana Itinerante da Juventude
Emily, Felipe, Gelson, Maria and Rafaela.
“CIJoga aims to promote spaces of dialogue that can motivate political and social participation, bringing to light the power of the youth from the outskirts of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Our Youth Itinerant Caravans will travel high schools. In short, we hope to see the youths legitimately participating in discussion spaces that are rightfully theirs, and to see young people acknowledging their skills and their autonomy.”
Hungary
On the trail of deprivation
"The solution is a community laundry and bath in the Community Centre of the village. The team selects and buys a washing machine, installs it and sets up a bathing and washing space. The team also intends to organise talks with women and men living in the village, free samples of product, a carnival to create funny self-made advertisements on cleaning and sanitizing products and dressing up related to the theme. This will transform the place for all young people in the community to gather and spend time together."
The Conquerors of Fear
“Our greatest problem is that we are discriminated against because of our Roma origin. The goal of our communications campaign is to get those who look down on Roma young people to realise that what they are doing is wrong and that it is possible to change their behaviour. We want Roma young people, who are being hurt by their peers, to know that they are not alone and that it is all right to be themselves. This is important because today we are seriously disadvantaged in education and on the job market.”
Jordan
Volunteers with Disabilities
Abdullah, Moua'ayad, Salam, Mhd and Bashar.
“Persons with disabilities in Jordan are beginning to lose hope as specialized services are limited and not accessible by the most vulnerable. The on-demand volunteers with disabilities platforms aims to change this by providing an opportunity for persons with disabilities to request support from nearby vetted volunteers. In doing so, we hope to change the volunteering culture in Jordan, and remove the stigma associated with asking for help.”
BullyFree
Ola, Bisan, Farah and Lujain.
“We came up with a solution called the BullyFree application. If a student experiences a bullying incident, they can click a button that will send a notification to the school principal, and they can explain the incident either through a voice or written message. It will also equip them with the tools and know-how to overcome the immediate psychological effects they endure. We aim to build a database to identify the prominent types of bullying, and streamline the processes and actions needed.”
Kenya
The Hadassah Project
Melissa, John, Daniel, Sifa, Njeri, Tracy, Joy, Governor, Victoria and Victor.
“We aim to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line by allowing children stemming from such families to explore their artistic talents. We would equip them with all the necessary tools to create careers for themselves in the arts. We will identify each child’s gift, develop these talents through interactive teaching sessions and expose them to the Kenyan art scene through guest appearances and tours to places of inspiration and influence.”
360 Recycle
Mitesh, Isha and Prajna.
“We aim to develop the most sustainable recycled material in Kenya using the wastes of only plastic, glass and rubber. Apart from waste management, we intend to create employment positions for those who live in underdeveloped areas of the country. Locals bring in any of these three wastes and are paid according to the amount and type of waste they bring through a reverse vending system. This provides us with a material that can be used in furniture designing, slabbing and curbing of footpaths or gardens as well as sign and fence posts.”
Kosovo
Khom Shok
Enida, Vesë, Agrina, Ema and Tea.
“We want to ensure all children with hearing impairments have a chance to study, learn and achieve the future they hope for. KomShok is an online digital platform that enables education, expression of ideas and perspectives through sign language for people with impaired hearing. We decided to include multiple videos about different topics. We will add subtitles in Albanian and parallel videos where the interpretation of the lesson will be done in sign language by professionals. A special feature of this platform will be the blog where users will be free to interact and communicate with each other.”
TechDummy
Qamil, Sejdi, Ereza, Bleona and Riad.
“We are working to ensure that medical students have ample opportunities for hands-on, practical learning. The purpose of our company is to create a highly efficient Digital Mannequin, which would increase healthcare education quality and opportunities for practicing the nurses’ profession, develop practical professional experience and strengthen women professionals’ usage of tech.”
Lebanon
WeFindInterns
Malak, Ibrahim and Souha.
“WeFindInterns.com is a platform that ensures the best experience through its services for both the youth of today and companies. The former benefits from proper available internships that suit their majors and interests, and helps them build a better and brighter future/career. The latter is provided with better exposure and the most qualified interns without any waste of time and effort.”
Peer-to-peer mentorship (P2P)
Mostafa, Mohammad, Mohammad and Ali.
“Peer-to-peer mentorship is an orientation project targeting high school students in schools where there is no career guidance. It will guide them with the aid of current university students and professional consultants to give them a better understanding of the majors they are considering, a broad view of career options and the reality of university life. This will help high school students make better choices about their majors and career paths, so that they avoid losing time and money due to changing majors while at university.”
North Macedonia
Interconnecting Solutions - SuperPako
David, Stojan, Filip and Nikola.
“We created SuperPako, a superhero that fights against violence and empowers young people to be the heroes of their own lives. Our mobile game application works on a principle of a forum theater, where the user experiences a scene of violence by entering in the role of the victim. The idea is to empower users who are victims of violence and teach them how to react in such occasions and for the bullies to make them feel how is it in other people’s shoes, by creating empathy. Also, in the app any act of violence can be reported or it can be asked for help.”
GLOBAL WINNERS: AndroMeta - SpeakOut
Danche, Dario, Aleksandra, Matej and Amra.
“SpeakOut is a mobile app that motivates young people to ask for help anonymously and be a support to their peers. They are offered two choices on getting help. To post publicly and get help from other members in the community or a private one-to-one chat with a volunteer. Our Vision is to help victims of bullying that are insecure, don't know who to tell, have lack of trust or are afraid to speak out anonymously.”
Montenegro
Act Gently be Friendly
Andjelka, Jovana and Sunčica.
“Our project aims to improve the mental health of youth and help them fight toxic stress by empowering them and enabling them to live healthy, fulfilling lives. Our solution is to implement a “Mindfulness class” as a part of the school system, providing students an opportunity to develop empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, tolerance, consciousness and gratitude – all of the traits and characteristics that will be essential value for their lives.”
Perspektiva Live
Matija, Aleksandar and Ognjen.
“We want to create socially conscious, responsible art. We want to use art to talk about problems and taboo subjects that are present in our community. Also, we want to help young artists to bring their ideas to reality and to create a network where they could exchange experiences and help each other. One of the ways is to do it through forum theater. We are giving our knowledge, skills and equipment for free in order to help young people express their creativity.”
Nicaragua
Pearl Stars
Shaleinie, Sheena, Derick and Margol.
“The project consists in the creation of a self-support group to raise the self-esteem of pregnant and maternal adolescents through educational and preventive sessions, exchange of experiences, recreational activities and crafts, as well as the creation of inter-institutional alliances, so that they continue with their secondary studies.”
Una Mano Amiga
Lingy, Ruth and Ashby.
“Una Mano Amiga is a project that supports pregnant adolescents and young mothers between 14 and 24 to continue their studies. Through our services, we advise these mothers so that they know the available study options and different modalities, accompanying them in the enrollment process and following them up during their school year.”
Pakistan
Hygienic Bashali
Suroom, Sehrish and Sana.
“Kalash is a tribe found in Chitral, where women are considered untouchable and they are kept in a hut (called Bashali) away from people during their periods. We have started off with enhancing the facilities inside Bashali to make it more hygienic and comfortable for the Kalasha women. Eventually, it will lead us to our goal of making Kalasha women empowered and informed and eradicate the Bashali practice.”
GLOBAL WINNERS: The Red Code
Mahin, Sana and Sara.
“The Red Code concentrates on improving menstrual hygiene management amongst women of lower income and disadvantaged groups by conducting awareness workshops and providing them with reusable, cloth pads stitched by home based workers, therefore, creating self-sustaining, micro-entrepreneurship schemes. We are a social enterprise created for women, by women.”
Sudan
Ma'an
Mohamed, Ahmed and Enas.
“Ma’an is a service centre for the deaf/hard of hearing to help promote social inclusion and to integrate them in the community. It teaches sign language to their families and various service providers which will help boost their confidence, support them to continue their academic journey and find decent jobs.”
GLOBAL WINNERS: Muntjatna
Al, Manara and Yassin.
“Muntjatna is an online platform designed to exhibit local handmade products produced by internally displaced people in Naivasha camp to an international market. It supports displaced people - especially girls - to provide a source of livelihood and to give them a decent source of income rather than working at traditional brick kilns which are harming their health.”
Tajikistan
Payravon
Jahongir, Khurshed, Mirumbek and Husein.
“Through our project we want to provide an opportunity for young people with disabilities and those from rural areas, including NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training), to learn necessary hard and soft skills that can help them to succeed in life. Our distance learning solution provides a set of skills that will allow most vulnerable groups of young people to be confident and manufacture artisan products that they can sell in an evolving virtual market.”
Youth Discovery
Fotima, Nohid, Mashhurakhon, Alisher and Mehrob.
“We are trying to solve the problem of skills mismatch, i.e. uninformed choice of profession by adolescents, and the problem that parents decide on behalf of adolescents not knowing the strength and weakness of their children and evolving job market. Our project will provide a mobile service on professional orientation. The solution consists of professional pedagogical and psychological tests to identify the student’s strengths, analyzing schoolchildren’s performance and informing parents and students about the professional inclination of the given student.”
Tanzania
Our Dignity
Elizabeth, Jackline and Magdalena.
“We are keeping girls in school by reducing adolescent pregnancies. Due to the culture and traditions that exist in Tanzania today, most parents are unable or not willing to openly speak about Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) with their children, especially on topics such as relationships and sexual intercourse. We provide SRH teaching techniques to parents. Parents will receive ideas around how they can pass on SRH education to their daughters without having to feel uncomfortable.”
The Experts
Domitrida, Zahra and Faith.
“Our goal is to reduce the number of adolescent girl dropouts in Tanzania due to abuse and violence. Our solution is a web-based platform to profile cases of abuse and violence at a school level and connect the victims to social welfare services, gender desk access at police stations within their vicinity for protection services, health services and many others. The application will be able to provide records of the cases reported in schools and will track progress of all opened case all the way to their eventual closure. This mechanism will support in bridging the gap between service providers and victims of violence in school.”
Thailand
GLOBAL WINNERS: Fantastic Four
“Our team’s aspiration is to… solve the unemployment problem of juvenile offenders. If our website is successful… it will facilitate juvenile offenders’ ability to find jobs and to save costs associated with job application. Business operators will have access to information about the offenders and thus a better understanding about the positive change and self-improvement of these juvenile offenders. The team has support from the Department of Juvenile Observation and Protection which has an MOU with more than 300 business operators which are ready to offer employment opportunity to juvenile offenders.”
Unlock Idea
“The objective of our project is the reduction of teenage pregnancies in Thailand and other countries around the globe. We have come up with a solution to the problem, with a focus on providing children with access to information and accurate understanding of sex, as well as an opportunity to have conversations with adults about the topic. Our invention, the SESS (Sex Education Sensor System) is a sensor device that provides education on sex with the aim of enabling the target group to have a better understanding and develop a better attitude on the topic.”
Vietnam
Folktale
Quynh, Dung, Thong and Hang.
“Folktale wishes to improve gender inequality in Vietnam by providing additional books on gender equality for children. Folktale is going to organize the “tales” writing contest… for anyone who studies high school and university… to collect the five best ideas to publish children's books. Our team also organizes outreach to approach parents who buy books.”
WeConnect
Huy, Uyên and Quân.
“We are building a community where people with hearing impairment will be oriented and advised on their career; introduced and referred to job opportunities. WeConnect includes video to introduce prospective companies and jobs to people with hearing impairment; job referral and support in professional training to equip people with hearing impairment with more knowledge relevant for jobs; and platforms to connect companies and people with disabilities including website and events.”
Zimbabwe
Charltan
Charlene and Tanaka.
“Our goals are to empower prematurely married women to have basic secondary education, equip them with relevant employability skills, train them in financial literacy and entrepreneurship to boost their business management acumen and improve their livelihoods, and to teach them self-reliance and financial independence. Charltan project proposes a school exclusively for prematurely married women that will use the block tech model of learning so as to accommodate other duties women may have within their households.”
GLOBAL WINNERS: Amigo Solutions
Simbarashe, Blessing, Brighton, Eddie, Farai and Nashe.
“It is beyond alarming when UNESCO reports that there is currently a 14:1 student to textbook ratio in the Sub-Saharan region of Africa. Amigo Academic Portal, an online application, creates a hub that allows a student to create a free account and access books, past exam papers with their marking schemes, notes, slides, videos, tutorials and journals. The aim is to create an ever-growing and endless hub where a student can locate anything and everything educational at one place.”