by Chris Agbo,
The Disability Rights Advocacy Center (DRAC) Disability Innovation Lab that commenced 3 weeks ago came to an end on Thursday in Abuja.
DRAC with support from VOICE Nigeria, launched the 2020 edition of her Disability Innovation Lab through which young innovators and design thinkers gathered together to ideate, generate and create innovative solutions towards addressing the sexual and reproductive health and rights needs of women and girls with disabilities in Nigeria.
The top 3 winning ideas were selected in an interesting grand finale and they will be receiving an ideation grant to support the piloting of the ideas.
The Executive Director, DRAC, Dr. Irene Ojiugo Patrick-Ogbogu declaring the grand finale open said that the young men and women have been working hard for the past few weeks to develop technology driven and human-centered solutions to challenges relating to sexual and reproductive health rights of women and girls with disabilities. She said the last three days was just the result of the work that started when the call for the Innovation Challenge was announced in July/August 2020.
Speaking further, she said that after many days of intensive work, seven great ideas made it to the finale and one out of these seven will emerge as the overall winner. There would also be prizes for the second and third most compelling ideas. She applauded VOICE Nigeria for making this innovation lab happen to their unwavering financial and technical support.
The three groups, Team Mercury/Venus, Team Mars /Jupiter and Team Neptune/Saturn presented their different ideas in a colorful and highly exciting ceremony where a total of seven ideas were presented
The team of judges drawn from seasoned disability rights advocates with people like Dr. Irene Patrick-Ogbogu, Lawrence Idemudia of Centre for Deaf Inclusion, Obinna Ekujereonye of NAB FCT among others, thoroughly examined the seven ideas presented, using criteria such as the idea that meets an immediate need, cost effectiveness of testing and developing the idea and the possibility of implementing the idea within the shortest period of time without a need to embark in rigorous researches to perfect the idea.
The winning idea as voted by the judges came from Team Neptune & Saturn with an innovation called the SMART CANE – an assistive device for a blind woman to be able to navigate her to access healthcare and the blind in general in their daily living. (see the video of the presentation).
The second-place idea is JANE KNOWS which came from Team Mercury & Venus – using a female mascot named Jane to breakdown core problems and solutions of Sexual and Reproductive Health Services of women and girls with disabilities. It will be promoted on all communication channels that will aid access to information by women and girls with disabilities as relates to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services.
The third-place idea is known as DESCRIBA, innovated and presented by Team Mars & Jupiter – an app to be used in android phone that will aid the learning of sign language interpretation. It will help someone who doesn’t know how to sign to know what each sign means without the help of a sign language interpreter, and enhance communication between the healthcare providers and the deaf women and deaf people at large. It will also help to further popularize sign language across the country.
Mr. Peter Nwochei, the President of Rotary International, Falamo, Lagos in his goodwill message promised to collaborate with DRAC to implement some of these innovations created by these young people. He urged the media at the event to ensure that they promote the event because the event is worth propagating. He said what the young men and women are doing should be seen by the public. He urged DRAC to bring such event to Lagos and Rotary International would be glad to sponsor it.
He also said that DRAC is doing a wonderful job and for that reason, his TV show being aired in Lagos will allocate free slots for DRAC programmes in his show every week.
Obinna Ekujereonye, Chairman of Nigeria Association of the Blind FCT chapter, promised to get their partners to work with Team Neptune & Saturn on actualizing the Smart cane because the benefits are enormous.
TQM learnt that the top three ideas would be receiving ideation grants from DRAC’s VOICE Nigeria project. According to the ED, DRAC, every of the seven idea are unique and impactful but the selection is informed by urgency, realizable and nature of the problem targeted. She urged the groups not to discard those ideas that didn’t make it into the top 3 and they should continue to work and nurture the ideas possibly with collaborations and partnership, they may be funded in future. She promised that DRAC will continue to work and partner with the groups.
Some pictures of the event
