SL uni student group wins at Huawei Seeds for the Future’s Tech4Good

Team Futurecasters, representing 10 university talents among the 18 young Sri Lankan university talents, who recently took part at Huawei Seeds for the Future, became the winners of the Tech4Good project in their class group, among the student teams from Singapore, Brunei and Sri Lanka. 

The team is also shortlisted to join the Global Tech4Good competition organised by Huawei, that is scheduled to be held in January 2022. 

The Tech4Good project also enabled the students formed into teams to create solutions that would leverage technologies to address social or economic issues affecting the world and each group worked with mentors to provide guidance on their projects.

Team Futurecasters, that included 10 young talents from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, National School of Business Management, Sri Lanka International Buddhist Campus and Horizon College of Business and Technology, became the winners and the other team of eight young talents from Sri Lanka Team UOC were from the University of Colombo. 

A total of 18 young Sri Lankan university students from six different universities pursuing careers in the fields of information communication technology (ICT), computer science, software engineering and networking, successfully completed and graduated from the Huawei Seeds for the Future 2021 ICT programme. 

The newly launched Tech4Good group project is part of Huawei’s global CSR programme - Seeds for the Future and gives the challenge to student participants to examine how to use technology to address the world’s or their society’s most pressing social, health and environmental issues, while encouraging university students to increase their social entrepreneurship ability, problem-solving capabilities and leadership skills through team work with participants from many different countries across the world. 

Futurecasters presented a technological solution in terms of an application to one of the key health issues that today’s modern ICT employees and workforce face globally – to address the challenge of maintaining people to keep the appropriate sitting posture while sitting for a long time in front of computers. 

The graduation ceremony of Huawei Seeds for the Future took place on December 13, 2021 and was held online with the representation of Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the People’s Republic of China Dr. Palitha Kohonna, Education Ministry Secretary Prof. Kapila Perera and Huawei officials. The graduation ceremony also showcased students’ talents, including a performance of a cultural song.

Speaking at the graduation ceremony Dr. Kohonna said, “With Sri Lanka embracing digitalisation to rapidly progress in its economy, the contribution made by Huawei is invaluable and that it will be consistent with the values and policies of the government of Sri Lanka to digitalise the economy.”
“I would like to congratulate the students as they embark on their exciting ICT careers in future and would like to thank Huawei for the magnanimous gesture for making this opportunity available to our youngsters in Sri Lanka,” Dr. Kohonna added. 

To date, with this year’s 18 students, a total of 74 Sri Lanka university talents have participated in Seeds for the Future and now in its sixth year in Sri Lanka, with 2021, the programme is now an annual symbolic project in Sri Lanka’s ICT and education sector, carried out by Huawei in corporation with the Education Ministry in Sri Lanka.