Generation Unlimited — Vision of hope from Atbara to innovation in Sudan’s Darfur
By: Unicef Sudan
Tags: Humanitarian

How Sudan’s youth are pushing for sustainable solutions via innovative ideas to make long lasting change in their communities.

UNICEF Sudan launched the Young People’s Agenda contest as part of Generation Unlimited at the UN General Assembly 2018. Sudan is one of 16 countries chosen to participate. Over 2000 Sudanese Youth aged 14–24 applied for the Youth Challenge.

Twenty young innovators were invited to join a workshop to design new solutions. These innovators come from 12 states; North Darfur, Central Darfur, Northern State, Gadarif, River Nile, Blue Nile, White Nile, Sennar, Khartoum, Red Sea, North Kordofan, South Kordofan.

We talked to a few of the contestants that made it to the final 10 applicants.

Meet Elsadig Haydar (18), Omer Elhaj (18) and Yusuf Elgazi (24) from Atbara, Sudan. These young innovative youths are members of the Union for the Visually Impaired in Atbara, River Nile State, Sudan. They found out about the Generation Unlimited youth challenge through word of mouth.

Vision of Hope

Towards promoting equal access to education, they came up with the idea to create a digital platform for all visually impaired people in Sudan.

The digital platform will give free access to educational tools for those visually impaired.

They named their project “Al Basera  meaning “Vision of Hope”. It is a local version of Wikipedia where any institution can share information on the website and then the information will be transcribed for those visually impaired and is accessible at all times.

“There are limitations in the system right now, that is why we thought of creating this website” said Omer “I am 80 percent blind but was not entitled to special education as I am not fully blind, and I can’t go to regular school nor to a visually impaired school, so now I froze my education”.

“We wanted to become part of this youth challenge to help people, and this opportunity will give us the chance to do so” said Yusuf.

“Nothing is impossible! You just have to be innovative, and learn how to find solutions for any obstacle”

Elsadig, Yusuf & Omer

Local Solution for a Global Vision

Growing up in Nivasha Camp, one of Sudan’s largest Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in North Darfur Manara Asad (23), Al Fadel Suliman Mekki (22) and Yaseen Musa Sabr (23) want to use their project to give back to the community where they were raised.

“We found out about this youth challenge through Facebook and we decided to apply!” said Manara.

They want to give the people who still live in North Drafur’s IDP Camp, an opportunity to develop financially by providing them more job opportunities through this project. Their idea was to train mainly the women to recreate their already ever-day hand craft items and sell them to the wider population of Sudan through an online delivery system.

Manara

“We will create a delivery system that can deliver all across Sudan, and the revenue will be used to help the camp develop” said Manara confidently.

“When it becomes successful, we want to export global. Our goal is to empower women, help our community, and allow Sudan and the world to see the amazing crafts that come from Nivasha camp”

During the final workshop the best ideas will receive a small grant and mentoring to apply their ideas in their respective locality. The successful ones will be chosen to represent Sudan and compete globally.

#GenerationUnlimited #Innovation #YouthChallenge #Sudan

By Iman Mustafa, Communications and Advocacy Consultant.