PHOTO: I am Karachi
KARACHI: Benish, 20, and her three-member team want to bring about a change in the way art is perceived by society. The young team believes that art has become restricted to a particular set of people, while the rest of the population is missing out on its beauty.
For this purpose, her team, 2 Square, wants to arrange a 'baithak' space in each area's community hall, which, according to her, costs around Rs4,000. "In case there isn't a community hall in the area, we'll use public schools that we can get at a minimal cost," she said.
The team plans to select ambassadors from diversified cultural hubs of Karachi. "An individual from Saddar, who knows about the rich culture of the area, will be selected. After a month of research, a community hall will hold a 'baithak' related to that area's specialty," she explained. "It can be music, literature, or anything related to art and culture, and in this way the people of Jauhar or Lyari can get accustomed to the people of Saddar and learn about the diversified culture of this city."
According to Benish, a particular community and area will be targeted, and after a month of work, a weekend performance will be held, thus bringing the idea of a pluralist Karachi to life.
This was one of the innovative ideas to make Karachi a better city to live in that floated around Habib University on Sunday evening. The 'I Am Karachi Innovation Challenge' drive was launched in May with the aim of fostering a culture of problem-solving and creating a society that opens avenues for innovators. It ended with lots of innovative ideas in five key areas — education, health, law and security, transport and environment, and arts, culture and sports. The innovative idea drive was jointly organised by the Pakistan Innovation Foundation (PYF) and the 'I Am Karachi' consortium, and was sponsored by the Karachi Youth Initiative.
According to PYI's communication analyst, Rimsha Shah, out of the 369 teams and the 958 individuals that registered for the competition, 130 teams and 40 individuals made it past the first round on Friday. "The selected teams then underwent rigorous training, mentoring workshops and successive rounds of jury [evaluation] to arrive at the top seven finalist teams," she said.
Benish's 2 Square was one of the winning teams. She plans to kick off their campaign after Ramazan. "We are going to get funds to merchandise the idea through sponsors, which will be arranged by KYI," she said.
The other winning idea that impressed the jury was that of Pireh Pirzada. Her three-member team, UAP Solutions, floated the idea of bringing change in the education of physically and mentally challenged children.
They intend to offer an interactive e-learning platform for special children to educate and train themselves. "We will provide academic as well as functional education," claimed Pirzada, adding that, for this purpose, they would use the Advance Specialised Collaborative Learning system. According to her, the system has been designed with the help of psychologists and will stimulate the children's minds.
The special award for the Pakistan Sabeen Mahmud Prize for the Most Innovate Hack went to the Axon team. They presented the idea of an incident reporting system (IRS), which, according to the young team, will make crime reporting more interactive.
"With the implementation of this system more people will willingly report crimes," said Muhammad Muzammil, a member of the Axon team. "This will also fill the knowledge gap of users about the current law and order situation and crime statistics," he explained.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 16th, 2015.
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