Ayuda
Helps: AdZU Sweeps Ericsson Technology for Good Award at Smart Innovation
Convention
Team Ayuda, the
representative of the Ateneo de Zamboanga University (AdZU) from the College of
Science of Information Technology (CSIT), bagged the Ericsson Technology for
Good Award during the 14th SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards
last May 11, 2018.
Nicole Ivan Marquez,
Julienne Veronica Tuazon, Aimee Primrose Tubio, and Genesis Dale Larroder, all
4th year Electronics and Communications Engineering students, along
with Jessica Partosa, their mentor, attended the 14th SWEEP Innovation
and Excellence Awards at Green Sun, Makati City where they bagged the Ericsson
Technology for Good Award.
Ericsson, a company that
provides hardware and software for improving communications technology, has
been at the forefront for innovating and creating products and services that
puts the welfare of society and the greater good first.
Their project, Ayuda, is a
disaster management web application that registers evacuees in the cloud as
well as their evacuation site location and contact number. The evacuees’
records are entered into an online database to keep track of their basic
information. This project aims to assist relatives of the affected individuals
locate their families after calamities strike. This is especially helpful these
days since the number of Internally Displaced People (IDP) in the Philippines
has increased. IDPs are people who are forced to leave their homes due to or in
order to avoid calamities, both manmade and natural.
According to the Internal
Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), an organization that provides statistics
for internally displaced or at risk individuals, of the 103,797,000 Filipinos,
445,000 have been displaced due to conflict and violence and 2,529,000 have
been displaced due to disasters since December 2017. These people have been
relocated to safe places for medium-term arrangements.
News now sweeps the nation
of displaced families looking for their loved ones after fleeing their homes.
In light of the rising political unrest and consecutive natural disasters,
Ayuda could help these families locate each other.
Ayuda, the Chabacano word
for “help” summarizes what the team sets out to do. Carrying the Ignatian
values of being men and women for others, the team sets out to prove that Ayuda
helps.
