VERN's students Iva Focht, Klara Glavač Lisinski and Marina Petrović recently returned from Dubai, from the regional finals of the global competition "HULT Prize", with excellent placements and praise from the international jury and Sheikh Mohammed himself.
To make the success even more significant, they are the first VERN' representatives to ever participate in this competition, which regularly features students from the world's most prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Yale, the London School of Economics, etc.
"In the competition of 64 teams from numerous countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc., we achieved an excellent ranking and continue to compete in the online challenge , where we continue to collect points and compete with the best. Unfortunately, despite all the praise from the jury, including the sheikh himself who was a member of the jury, we did not manage to place in first place, and it was precisely this that led to the main final in New York, in this part of the competition. The sheikh's recommendations, advice and support were very important to us, and since we were the only team from Southeast Europe in Dubai, that is precisely why we want to leave our mark with this project. We are currently defining tasks and contacting partners and "friends of our idea" in order to perfect this product," Iva explained to us.
And how does their DOM project, which won the jury's full support and apparently offered one of the best answers to the theme of this year's competition "Early childhood education in the urban slum and beyond", actually work?
"With the DOM project, we are trying to solve the entire problem of preschool education in urban slums. Our role is not that of an educator or a volunteer, but rather that of a so-called "middle man" who improves and strengthens the existing system. Our web platform will unite all persons and institutions that are in any way connected to this topic, as well as the development of our product, which should solve the problem of the lack of infrastructure in urban slums," said Klara.
Still full of impressions from Dubai and the competition itself, our students told us that they would not give up on this project, because the feedback was an excellent guide for further development, and the praise from international experts was additional motivation.
Girls, we wish you much success!
