Waliullah Bhuiyan, Founder and CEO of education startup Light of Hope, has been named as one of the winners of the Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Awards 2018.
Waliullah is one of the eight entrepreneurs who has been chosen for this year’s awards from 2,120 entrepreneurs who applied for the awards from every continent.
The other seven winners are Andrew Almack, Founder of Plastics for Change, Diana Chao, Founder of Letters to Strangers, Samir Lakhani, Founder of Eco-Soap Bank, Priya Prakash, Founder of HealthSetGo, Adepeju Jaiyeoba, Founder of Mother’s Delivery Kit, Mayank Midha, Co-Founder of GARV Toilets, and Abi Ramanan, Co-Founder of ImpactVision.
“Winners will be flown to Cambridge for an all-inclusive accelerator programme with CISL, delivered by experts in sustainability, entrepreneurship and scaling for impact later this month,” said a statement on the award website. “The winners will share a €100,000 grant, along with tailored one-to-one mentoring for 12 months. From the eight winners, one overall winner will be awarded the HRH The Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize at a high profile event in London.”
Waliullah was given the Award For developing Sputnique – a solar-run multimedia classroom solution that fits inside a backpack developed by Light of Hope - a startup that helps to bring quality education and future skills to children. With Sputnique, the startup aims to solve a different problem.
The award page writes, around 30,000 primary schools in remote areas of Bangladesh find it hard to deliver quality classes using the interactive multimedia content. It is a problem the Bangladesh government is addressing by investing in 26,000 multimedia classrooms in schools. But it has struggled to help those which are off the grid. “Sputnique, a solar-powered multimedia classroom complete with computing stick, projector, pop-up screen, and internet connectivity aims to solve this problem.
Sputnique, a flexible, foldable solar panel that weighs just 6kg, can be transported just about anywhere. Teachers can take ‘live’ classes from a central location to multiple locations using the low-bandwidth video-calling software developed for Sputnique.” So far, Light of Hope has helped provide better education to 75,000 children in Bangladesh.
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The Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Awards, jointly delivered by Unilever and CISL, support young people from all over the world who have existing initiatives, products or services tackling some of the planet’s biggest sustainability challenges. Now in their fifth year, the Awards have reached over 3,500 inspiring young sustainability entrepreneurs and their organizations, and provided tailored support and funding to 29 winners, helping them achieve scale for impact.
