As explained here four students from Portmarnock Community School were representing Ireland with their project Global Citizens Mapping the future. The project was the best in Ireland having won the Young Social Innovators prize this year and as national champion was automatically selected by Sage International to attend and compete in the World Cup in The Philippines.

The innovation side of it was technical, and based on the schools combined new skills from having learned how to use openstreetmap (specifically #MapLesotho), street image capturing using Mapillary and designing an emergency services phone application using bluemix with help from IBM in Mulhuddart, Fingal. The philantrophic side of the project was also very strong as all of these innovations were applied to Lesotho, where the school has a charitable involvement through Action Ireland Trust.

And the wonderful news is that they scooped the Sustainable Development Goal 11 award: “Making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. #MapLesotho certainly does contribute to identifying infrastructure gaps that help the cities and towns of Lesotho to be more resilient to climate change. Overall Portmarnock was ranked second in the competition to a very worthy heart sensor project from Canada.

What better way to relate the experience of these awards than to talk to hear the reaction of the students themselves shortly after winning.

The best part for me was meeting all the other teams. I feel happy that all of these countries have social responsibility and social enterprise as their vision for the future. I’ve made friends for life and am helping to change the world.

“The experience will be extremely useful to me, as I learned new things and learned a lot about the power of presenting your ideas and work to others . I think it is a skill we will all need.”

The highlight of all this was meeting Ndaba Mandela who is inspiring like his grandfather must have been. You would learn something from everything he says.

We met so many people who defy the stereotypes of their countries, that we ourselves felt at liberty to be ourselves and present our culture in a unique way and strive for our own personal development.