In 2015, the United Nations Member States unanimously adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, “a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.”
At the heart of the Agenda are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a guide for every country in the world to tackle the global problems affecting humanity. It’s a list of essentials for every person on earth, from poverty to health, education to clean water, and larger issues like infrastructure, clean energy, and climate action.
All in a weekend’s work
They are lofty goals, ones even the most powerful people in the world struggle to implement, but for the student participants of York University’s Unhack 2022, ideating on solutions with the 17 SDGs is just another weekend activity.
York University’s YSpace joined 11 other Canadian post-secondary institutions in the Experience Ventures program, powered by the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking at the University of Calgary, to facilitate entrepreneurial thinking placements, such as this hackathon, to give students the space to develop an innovative skillset that can allow them to become future ready.
“My project was called Green Yu,” explains Nicole Ikheunbor, a first-year engineering student, “an app where York students could discover and connect with root sustainability initiatives on campus.”
Over one weekend, Nicole and Aleeya Irshad, first-year computer engineering, worked in separate groups to develop innovative, practical, and sustainable solutions to problems addressed by the 17 SDGs. From 7:00 pm Friday to noon Sunday, groups of diverse students ideated, workshopped, regrouped, and presented their projects to expert panelists.
“We were very inexperienced when it came to the business side,” Nicole admits. “So when (one of the panelists) asked, ‘How do you profit from Green Yu’ it gave us pause.”
Neither Nicole nor Aleeya had a business student on their team, though Aleeya’s group did their best with the expertise they had.
“We did have a business plan,” Aleeya explains, “but we had to guess at the answers to the panelist’s financial questions. We asked some of the mentors there how we would approach the business angle of this so that it’s both marketable but fair.”
Guidance and mentorship
One of the mentors was Artem Solovey, a co-organizer of Unhack 2022. Artem is familiar with creating sustainable solutions for York U: in 2018, he created Yu Ride, a ridesharing service for universities, and works with Experience Ventures at York University to provide entrepreneurial activities and opportunities to students.
Ventures that work with Experience Ventures, such as Artem, benefit from participating in the program by engaging with students and having the opportunity to evaluate early talent at no cost. Participating companies are asked to make an in-kind contribution that can include space offered for an entrepreneurial thinking placement.
Artem gave Nicole’s group some valuable feedback on the second day of Unhack, when all the groups gathered in the Bergeron Centre for Engineering Excellence, a futuristic building full of labs and workspaces.
“The space we were in is called The Sandbox,” Aleeya says. “There are whiteboards all over the walls, breakout rooms, and even tools like 3D printers. My friends and I got to work there every day after class because it’s such a great space.”
A centre for collaboration
Even as first-year students, Nicole and Aleeya feel welcome in the Bergeron Centre.
“There’s a lot of space to do work and collaborate,” Nicole says. “The Centre is very futuristic, very clean, very quality. It’s exactly what you would expect from a computer science and engineering facility.”
Aleeya agrees. “It’s very futuristic. It has a lot of different features that a lot of other engineering schools may not have.”
It’s the perfect place to prepare for their careers and pursue opportunities to bolster their education. Nicole was sponsored to attend the Canadian Celebration of Women in Computing (CAN-CWiC) conference, and Aleeya was elected to an executive position in the Woman in Science and Engineering Club.
Unhacking global problems
On Sunday morning, Aleeya’s group was awarded first place in the preliminaries and then had only a few hours to prepare for the finals of Unhack 2022. In addition to the students receiving an honorarium through Experience Ventures for participating in the hackathon, Aleeya’s team were awarded further for making it into the finals. The top 11 teams all received an honorarium prize from Experience Ventures.
Even without the honoraria incentive, was it worth it?
Aleeya says, “I definitely recommend Experience Ventures to anyone who wants to work with other people and apply collaboration skills, technical skills, soft skills, and time management. You learn so much.”
Nicole quickly agrees. “I’m really fortunate I was able to be a part of this experience through Experience Ventures because I’ve learned so much, especially concerning collaboration and leadership. I feel like this is a first step in how a person can really incorporate these skills into design initiatives and develop these skills for the future.”
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals may be ambitious, but with students like Aleeya and Nicole on the case, the future is bright indeed.