The World Summit Youth Awards has extended its deadline for admissions, allowing young people from around the world to submit entries on its Web site until 31 July.
The World Summit Youth Awards (WSYA) offer recognition and networking opportunities for people under 30 who use the Internet, mobile phones or other digital media to help bring about the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
These include overcoming poverty, hunger and disease, inequalities, lack of education and environmental degradation.
Projects will compete to win a chance of meeting youth from all continents and network with representatives of NGOs, governments and media.
Solutions can be submitted in one of six categories: 'fighting poverty, hunger and disease'; 'education for all'; 'power to women'; 'create your culture', 'go green'; and 'pursue truth'. Three winners and two runners-up for each category will be selected by an international jury of young ICT experts. They will evaluate the projects in two rounds of online judging.
Global head of R&D for communications firm Telfree, Rapelang Rabana, who is the South African ambassador for the World Summit Youth Awards, says the awards offer a prime opportunity for local Web and mobile innovators to get recognition for their solutions on a global platform.
“South Africa is uniquely positioned in the area of mobile technology and the applications we're seeing locally have great significance for the African market,” she notes. “We can really capitalise on this strength.”
Rabana adds that previous winning entries have demonstrated various ways Web and mobile technologies are impacting the development space. An initiative from India, for example, called 'Voice of the youth', invites young people to comment on news in their country, and has more than 400 volunteer writers. It's created a whole new ecosystem of media production,” she says.
“My hope this year is that there are many more South African entries and that a South African wins in at least one of the categories.”
All the winning entrants will be invited to the WSYA 2011 winners' events in Skopje, Macedonia, where they have a chance to present their projects to a global audience. These events also offer an opportunity to engage with government representatives, NGOs, media, and experts in the field of ICT for development.
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