Two youths embark on the journey for a digital tomorrow

The transformative power of mobile and digital communication is shaping the world every day. And at the forefront of this movement are youths - the opinion leaders of tomorrow, the digital rebels. A platform for such rebels is the Telenor Youth Summit.

Telenor Youth Summit is a platform where everyone with a brilliant idea gets to bring out the innovator in them. This year's Bangladesh round saw some fantastic ideas. After a grueling fight, only two emerged victorious – Ashrarul Haq Sifat & Nawshin Mehzabin Chowdhury.
Ashrarul, a to-be electrical engineer from BUET, got the ticket for Oslo by coming up with the project 'Digital Maduli: Keep kids safe near water'. How he came up with the idea is even more amazing.  

While having a random discussion with a friend, the issue of safety near water came up. After thinking deeply about the problem, Ashrarul realized the magnitude of it and it shocked him to his very core. “This area is certainly something that needs work”, he thought.
Ashrarul saw that the Telenor Youth Summit was the best place to present the idea. Considering the scale of the problem, Ashrarul wanted to address the issue in front of a bigger audience and Telenor Youth Summit was the perfect platform to reach a global audience.

Nawshin, on the other hand, came up with the idea of her project “First Lady: Ensuring a safe society for women”, while she was volunteering for an NGO.  She met many women there who were struggling with the safety issue. Despite several ongoing projects at the policy level, Nawshin wanted to come up with something quick that would aid women in distress via the use of technology - a solution that doesn't concern policy making or involvement of law enforcement. A solution that is easy.
Seeing the opportunity to work on this project on a much wider scale, Nowshin, who idolizes Malala Yousufzai, decided to participate in the competition to take her idea forward and to see how people would receive it.

Both the participants will be competing with the rest of the world in the final round of Telenor Youth Summit this December in Oslo. For more details of the projects, visit the Next Step webpage.

Digital Maduli Project Factsheet:
•    Digital Maduli focuses on drowning prevention for children, mainly infants by using geographical information system and a low cost wearable device with SIM integration
•    The project requires an large network infrastructure which can be supported and assisted by a key partners
•    The idea is to calculate the location of water bodies around a village/thana/moholla
•    The device will be synced with parents and local rescuers number
•    The device will monitor a child’s movement location
•    The device will locate the child’s geo-location (if around any water body)and send it to the parents and local rescuers with specific directions to the child’s position
•    The idea will help save lives, prevent trauma and injury, modify behavior of the child and also in employment
•    In order to make the project a more feasible one, lifeguard training, alarm system installation and awareness campaign will have to be conducted
•    The price of the device will be BDT 4000 where GP CSR team will be the main financer of the project
•    Funds can also be gathered through campaigning and crowd funding

First Lady Project Factsheet:
•    First Lady is an idea presented to ensure a safe society for women in our country
•    Target audience of the project are women from both urban and rural sectors
•    This service requires every woman to be registered with their personal data by the local authority (law enforcement, government agencies, NGOs)
•    A dialog project between the user and the local authority will be created on a monthly basis
•    The dialog project will be executed over an application
•    The local authority will call all registered women through a helpline service to ensure their safety
•    Witness box is also there which will allow registered women to post videos, picture comment of any violence witness
•    This service will be user friendly for both smartphone and bar phone users
•    Smartphone users will be able to send SMS, make emergency call, post videos, pictures comment (MMS) of any incident and bar phone users will be able to send SMS or make emergency call whenever any situation occurs
•    The application includes a fast dial and location tracking system during times of emergency so the authority can reach the location and take immediate action.
•    The application also includes push email/sms to NGOs and local authorities
•    This application will help provide impact and development on social, economic, individual, feasibility and sustainability grounds for women all across the country