Faculty Team from World University of Design enters Finals of ‘Enable Makeathon 2.0’
New Delhi, January 5, 2018: A young team of faculty members from World University of Design (WUD), India’s first and only University dedicated to education in the creative domain, have reached the final phase of the global competition ‘Enable Makeathon 2.0’. The Welava team consisting of faculty members Bhawna Welturkar and Abhishek Srivastava, both architects & industrial designers, have developed an entry ticket design which aims at making tourism more accessible to differently abled. The ticket designed for Humayuns tomb, Delhi provides instructions in Braille, has embossed touch graphics inspired by the predominant features of the monument, a monument-specific aroma, and a brochure to compliment the onsite experience. This innovative project is equipped with the provision of attaching a photograph of the visitor, as a takeaway souvenir.
Enabling the innovation eco-system, ‘Enable Makeathon 2.0’, is a global competition conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and & GDI Hub (Global Disability Innovation). This unique social collective movement in the field of humanitarian action, disability, innovation, entrepreneurship and technology, aims to crowd-source new, innovative solutions to enable people with disabilities and specific needs that have, so far, been neglected.
Commenting on the achievement Dr Sanjay Gupta, Director General of WUD said, “I am extremely pleased that two of our young faculty members have reached the final round of Enable Makeathon 2.0. WUD is India’s first university that is dedicated to education in the creative domain. Design is increasingly playing an important role across industry segments today and therefore it calls for a greater collaboration between academics, and businesses, adapting and using new technologies to enable solutions especially for the differently abled. It is our constant endeavour at the University to be able to provide a strategic platform and opportunities to our students and faculty in order to encourage critical thinking and innovation that are requisite drivers of India’s future development.”
The competition takes place from November 2017 to February 2018. The focus areas for 2018 are accessibility, employability, locomotive empowerment, and hearing and sight enablers This year a total of 92 teams of engineers, scientists, designers, innovators, persons with disabilities, humanitarians, manufacturers, investors and entrepreneurs competed against each other for grants out of which 9 have reached the finals after 3 rounds of intensive filtering and presentations. The competition will culminate on February 6 where three winners will be selected for an incubator grant and will get a chance to participate in a 1-year incubator program to further develop and scale their solutions.