The MIRA team, made up of four high school students integrated with the technician at Federal Institute of Minas Gerais (IFMG), in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, presented a social inclusion project aimed at deaf mothers and took both awards in the final of the Inova Jovem 2023 program, a business modeling competition organized annually by Innovation Agency of the State University of Campinas (Inova Unicamp).
The young women won both categories of the competition: Bank Assessment and Popular Vote. The result was revealed in the final of the competition, which took place last Thursday, the 23rd, and brought together 285 people online.
Watch the recording of the final here.
The project by students Maria Eduarda Neves de Almeida, Ana Clara Alves Belmonte Galvão, Rayssa de Oliveira Mendes and Isabella Heloísa Jacinto do Nascimento, accompanied by teacher Cristina Maertens, is a bracelet for deaf mothers, with baby monitor functions and emission of Vibrating and visual alerts when the baby cries.
“The quality of the work presented by such young students is admirable. We encourage entrepreneurship as a career and offer free training so that they can learn and develop their projects, however, every effort is their merit, as they demonstrate maturity and enthusiasm in participating”, comments Renato Lopes, associate executive director of Inova Unicamp.
The girls' work is related to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 3, Health and Well-being, and brings into focus the reality of 5% of the population, which is around 10 million citizens diagnosed with deafness, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
In addition to all the development of the business model, what caught the attention of the judging panel is that the students have also started producing the bracelet prototype, presented at the final event. As a result, the girls not only won both categories of the competition but also won, live, an extra prize from the panel's judge Renato Toi, co-founder of Speed Accelerator. The entrepreneur offered the girls specific mentoring in hardware totally free.
Read the full article published on the Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency website.
