By: Gilberto Artola

This morning the Latin American Innovation Rally 2019 was inaugurated, which aims to promote open innovation in university students in Latin America and in which for the first time the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast (URACCAN) has representation.

In the case of URACCAN, the Rally is based in the Las Minas venue, with a delegation of 30 students from different careers and the four university campuses (Bluefields, Bilwi, New Guinea and las Minas headquarters).

Students must make the formulation and presentation in a time of 28 consecutive hours of projects that solve challenges of the Region through the business model called CANVAS, which must be presented in a 3-minute video.

Elkis Ortega, headquarters coordinator, explained that at 9 a.m. the Rally began with the release of challenges, "For this year the first challenge has to do with vigorous efficiency in the working environment, production of clandestine connections in power distribution networks; S.O.S in case of earthquakes and natural disasters; intelligence systems to detect the absence of building security elements; Sustainable power generation system, Fake New, to detect fake news or stories on social media; new forms of horticultural production; sustainable bus stops; autism and digital inclusion. The challenges were released and all the universities proceeded to form the groups, on the internet, already on the website the students were enrolled, but the teams were formed until the time the challenges were released."

He stressed that URACCAN headquarters has 6 teams, "right now we are in a phase of exploration of each of the challenges, there are the 9 challenges available, but they have to decide which challenge they will work on over the next 28 hours. Those same challenges are for all universities, the more than 39 venues that exist at the Latin American level, that is, they are the same challenges for all universities and we compete under the same parameters and challenges, in case two universities carry the same challenge there is a jury to choose which of the two proposals is the best and choose the one that will win.By 28 hours students must have already created a proposal to solve the challenge they choose and the project model in CANVAS, they must have published it on the Internet, two hours later there will be a jury that will determine what the winners will be for each of the venues, that is, tomorrow at 4pm we already have two teams that will represent us nationally. And on Monday or Tuesday there will already be the winners at the Latin American level," he said.

Excited students

Jonny Wilfredo Simons Perez, of the New Guinea precinct, valued the Rally as an experience that will make a lot of positivism, "we are learning about sustainable development, how we are currently in our society, our economy and different social problems that we have and how to solve them," he argued

"We are with all the energies, the boys are very positive, everyone is already looking for strategic solutions to respond to the challenge we can choose, our expectation is to classify and represent our university," he said.

Institutional commission

This initiative from the university is being coordinated by the Directorate of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Multi-ethnic Women's Studies and Information (CEIMM) and the Academic Secretariat of the Las Minas campus, under the auspices of SAIH and CARCIP.

Headquarters of this initiative

In addition to URACCAN, Nicaragua has 14 other university headquarters throughout the country, of which 6 headquarters in Managua: National University of Engineering (UNI), Universidad Nacional Agraria (UNA), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (NAN-Managua) and several campuses thereof such as:

2 offices in Estelí (UNI-Estelí and FAREM-Estelí de la UNAN-Managua).

1 headquarters in Carazo (FAREM Carazo de la UNAN-Managua).

2 Headquarters in Chontales (FAREM Chontales)

1 Headquarters in León (UNAN).

1 Headquarters in Rivas (Antonio Valdivieso International University).

1 Headquarters in Bluefields (BICU).