Indian team in finals for Dell's global Social Innovation Competition

Bangalore: With the ideas of changing the world, Dell and the University of Texas at Austin came up with the Social Innovative Competition. Many students from different Universities have taken part in this competition. It is a business idea competition for University students, who can come up with innovative ideas, which have the potential to change the world by solving the environmental problems as well as help the needy. Dell will gift the winner with $50,000, second and third place winners will get $20,000 and $ 10,000 respectively. Through this prize money the winners can turn their ideas into new business or to bring it to reality. For the first time in Dell's five year competition, India has emerged as one of the finalist. Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies is among the five finalist teams in the competition from across the world. The project entry was submitted by the Indian student team SIFE CBS. SIFE CBS has been continuously struggling to use the positive power of business to empower people in need. With a threefold objective of economic, social and environmental betterment, they believe in their power to be the change the world needs. The Indian team has submitted their project titled 'Sanitation Solutions.' The team is lead by Lyad Sheikh. The basic idea of the project is to provide healthy sanitary condition to the women living in slum areas. The project aims at ensuring the use of hygienic sanitary napkins in slums across Delhi and providing a sustained means of livelihood to slum women. Regular awareness camps about sanitary hygiene are held in various slums across Delhi to teach them the basics of hygiene and answer their queries about the same. The team members of the project have provided the women with resources and infrastructure to set up their own business of making sanitary napkins and selling it in their own local slum. The women are taught to manage the finances of the business, thus making them financially literate and enabling them to manage their own income and household's income effectively and efficiently. They are also fulfilling their responsibility towards the environment. All sanitary pads are provided in a plastic cover which can be used for the purpose of disposal of those pads, hence not harming the environment in any way. The sanitary pads are made up of cotton and other organic material which are biodegradable. This minimizes any long term harm on the environment. The other finalist teams are project 'Malo Traders' from the Temple University, USA. This project brings the cutting edge technology towards solving problems of post-harvest losses and malnutrition in Mali. Project 'Community Bazaar,' from Carnegie Mellon University, USA aims to use renewable energy to bring prosperity and wealth to rural Sierra Leone in an innovative way. Another project know as 'Sustainable Sanitation in Urban Slums' from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA offers increase access to safe, affordable sanitation in urban slums. Project 'TakaTaka Solutions' from the London School of Economics, UK is about social enterprise that collects and recycles waste. It aims to bring about social and environmental change through a commercially viable business approach, in particular for waste-collection and recycling. The competition inspires the young students to think about global problems and also finding solutions for it. The Indian team is bringing up the sanitation problems in slum areas in India; well that is a real concern for us. Through this type of competition the country is getting fresh ideas from young people which can be very helpful. Moreover as other countries of the world are also participating, students can discuss their ideas with each other which can be implemented in future projects. We are looking forward to see some real changes in our country.