InnovEd 2022 concludes with Innovation and Creativity Webinar and Award Ceremony
Ebène 23 August 2022: The winners of InnovEd 2022 were announced on Thursday 18 August during the Innovation and Creativity Webinar and Award Ceremony that took place on an online setting. The virtual event saw the participation of more than 50 secondary schools that were represented by their students, facilitators and rectors.
For the final assessments held on 13 and 14 July through Zoom, 54 out of the 90 registered teams delivered an online presentation. Out of the 54 teams, the Subject Matter Experts that assessed the projects, selected 33 among them for further coaching.
The teams from different secondary schools competed in six distinct categories namely interactive media, cultural heritage, languages and publishing, performing arts, visual arts and crafts and design.
The winner in each category won a cash prize of Rs 20,000 while the runner up won a cash prize of Rs 10,000. Moreover, all the teams that reached the CREAThon level received a virtual Reality Headset for their Innovation Club and each participant and facilitator received a certificate of achievement.
“InnovEd should not be perceived as a mere competition that encourages students to work on innovative and creative projects. It is in fact, the very platform where we intend to catch them young and start carving out the innovator hidden in them. Through our young friends, we nurture the dream of transforming our country into a nation of entrepreneurs, who will take our society and economy to the next level of growth and sustainability. I would like to encourage our students to take full advantage of all the available resources and use them to continuously develop their skills and talents,” the Executive Director of the NPCC, Mr. Ashit Gungah, pointed on his welcome address. He added that “in a fast-changing global economy, we have to move from education for survival to education for innovation leading to entrepreneurship and employability.”
Mrs. Sharanaz Subratty, founder of Casting World conducted the first of two webinars scheduled during the event. The second webinar was conducted by Mr. Mujahid Emambokus, founder of Morivert. Both entrepreneurs spoke about their journeys as well as the challenges and comprises to be made for a successful business.
“Innovation is the key to sustained economic growth. Simply put, it means doing new things or doing things in a new way. It can be incremental or radical. It can be technological, organisational, marketing, product or process. It applies to all sectors: manufacturing, services, agriculture and education. The Covid-19 pandemic has compelled us all to innovate and this pandemic is also an opportunity for local entrepreneurs to think global. It will require non-physical modes of connectivity and flow of ideas and talent,” said the Minister of Industrial Development, SMEs and Cooperatives, Honorable Soomilduth Bholah. He further added that investors will search for talent especially those with high-end digital and engineering skills and the government is increasingly putting emphasis on developing the talents of our youth at a young age.
It is worth mentioning that since 2005, more than 50, 000 students and 3000 educators have participated in the InnovEd project. Since its inception in 2000, the NPCC has been promoting innovation at all levels – individual, corporate and national, as a main driver of productivity growth and competitiveness.
InnovEd is a project organised by the NPCC in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Human Resources, Scientific Research and Tertiary Education. The objective is to promote and instill creative, critical and innovative thinking among students. InnovEd aims to evoke and foster creativity in schools which will better prepare students for further education and employment.
