Winning Ideas Unlocking Community Potential: Sign Language Learning, Mobile Finance & Tackling Hunger

Ashoka is proud to announce the winners of Makers of More! The Makers of More Challenge, launched in partnership with Arthur Guinness Projects, received more than 300 entries from 45 countries around the world. The challenge aimed to discover innovators with solutions that build stronger communities with brighter futures.

Indonesia-based, Dreambender was selected as the overall winner, and awarded a prize of €30,000. The organization’s Isara project is a sign language dictionary and e-learning application that provides interactive, real-time and more appealing sign language learning through the use of Kinect, a motion sensor which was originally developed for Xbox video games.

Isara has already been adopted by over twenty schools and organizations that are working with the hearing impaired in five Cities including Jakarta, Bandung, Jogja, Magelang and Solo. The Isara system is positively impacting the lives of more than 500 people with hearing difficulties in Indonesia. The Dreambender team aims to fully roll out the system, across corporate and educational organizations throughout Indonesia by 2018.

“To be recognised in this way by Arthur Guinness Projects and Ashoka gives us great impetus and inspiration to move forward with the development of our project and move towards our vision for its future,” said Rizky Ario, Dreambender’s founder and CEO. “To be among such amazing projects like FoodCycle and Ensibuuko is truly an honour."

FoodCycle and Ensibuuko were the two runners-up and were each awarded a prize of €10,000. FoodCycle is a UK charity that combines volunteers, surplus food, and spare kitchen spaces to create tasty, nutritious meals for people at risk of food poverty and social isolation. Ensibuuko, based in Uganda, has created a mobile banking platform that offers a simpler and safer way for un-banked and under-served populations in rural areas to access financial services.

All three winners recently participated in a live conversation moderated by Makers of More expert judge, Emily Kasriel. Watch the video here, or access full information on the challenge.