Local students win Gold Award for entrepreneurship

Dublin People 25 Aug 2017

Pictured are the students from Portmarnock Community School, Ravikanth Gollapalli, Luke Peyton, Ahmed Jouda and Colin McAndrew.

A YOUNG Social Innovators (YSI) team from Portmarnock Community School won the Gold Award at the SAGE World Cup 2017 (Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship), in Odessa, Ukraine.

The students were announced as the global winners of the Social Enterprise Business category for their humanitarian street mapping project which has been developing over a number of years.

Delegations from 25 countries including two from Ireland travelled to the Ukraine to compete in the prestigious competition.
The team has won a number of Young Social Innovators of the Year Awards including the overall national Gold Award in 2016 for their project entitled 'Global Citizens Mapping the Future'.
The team has also accessed financial support through the YSI Social Innovation Fund, supported by Ulster Bank, on a number of occasions.
This fund was created by Young Social Innovators to help support young people to sustain and develop social innovation ideas.
The Portmarnock team has worked hard to create reliable maps of the Kingdom of Lesotho in Africa, where their twin school is situated.
Over the past four years, they have established this small landlocked nation as the most mapped country in Africa.
The maps which record geographical information such as infrastructure, population densities and land use has helped authorities tackle challenges such as soil erosion, unemployment and disaster relief.
It now serves as a model for other developing countries that have unreliable inadequate maps.
As the national co-ordinating host for the SAGE World Cup, Young Social Innovators chose this team to represent Ireland at the World Cup for teenage social entrepreneurs.

Speaking after the award announcement, Ravikanth Gollapalli, a member of the winning team said: "We are so proud to represent Ireland at the SAGE World Cup and are delighted to be bringing home the Gold Award.

"We believe we are making a real difference and are looking forward to developing our project throughout other schools in Ireland and beyond.

"We'd like to thank everyone in YSI for their continued support and our fantastic teachers and YSI Guides Niall Fitzgerald and Colette Cronin who have helped us every step of the way."