Toronto team finalist for Hult Prize

By Mohammad Ayub Khan
TMO Contributing Writer

TORONTO–A Canada based start-up team consisting of Aisha Bukhari and three other students from the University of Toronto has won MENA region finalist for the prestigious $1 million Hult Prize. Their team is called Team Atollo and all are students at the Rotman School of Management.

The competition, which was founded in 2009 by Ahmad Ashkar, a Palestinian entrepreneur, and has been held in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) and the Hult International Business School, represents the biggest student competition in the world.

Team Atollo winning project was ‘Talking Stickers’ which are aimed at reducing the word gap in underprivileged countries.

“Using Quick Response (QR) codes that can be activated by a simple, low-cost electronic ‘reader’, the stickers are built to voice educational words, phrases and sentences that stimulate early childhood learning. The voice of a parent or guardian can be recorded which then plays back to the child in the same voice. The stickers are proposed to be easily available in urban slums at a price between $4 and $8 all-inclusive of educational help for children aged  two-six years,” said a report in the Khaleej Times.

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