COVID or not, YGC Junior Season 9 motors on

Yet another season of Yarl Geek Challenge Junior has passed, with Season 9 ending this June. YGC Junior, a competition for students in schools organised in partnership with Provincial Department of Education Northern Province , has once again seen 50+ teams participating in this event, despite the current unprecedented COVID19 condition. Due to the lockdown, this year’s competition started with a webinar. This was designed to help inspire the students to come up with innovative ideas, which were to be submitted on the 14th of May. The students applied under Web, Mobile, Hardware, Innovation, and Application of Science categories for the competition.

3 days after the submission of applications, there was a team mentoring session for all teams, followed by a webinar on pitching guidance on the 31st of May. These sessions helped the students get ready for their one on one mentoring sessions, from which few teams would be selected to move on to the finals. After evaluating all of the wonderful ideas, 30 teams qualified for the finals, which was held on the 13th of June, 2020.

These talented school children continued to showcase a wide variety of innovations, this year solutions ranged from a life-sized pedal-driven car, solutions for the ‘new normal’ due to Covid19, robotic vacuum cleaners, wearable to prevent motorcycle accidents, homemade rake capable of picking up leaves and rubble, creative handwork made out of recyclable items including a ‘Panang kottai samiyaar’, mobile apps, web platforms, etc.

The panel and the mentors were impressed by the perseverance of these children to improvise and come up with solutions despite having limited access to resources and help, due to the lockdown situation. Especially the children from rural areas without proper connectivity and managing to come up with solutions while only having access to a smartphone, stood out and deserves a lot of appreciation.

Due to the immense amount of amazing projects that were submitted this year, the judges wanted to give recognition to some great submissions that stood out for various reasons. Hence following teams got a special mention by the judges in no particular order.

First, we have Rameshkumar Rajinthan from J/Hartley College, who made a smart switch system that allows remote access to switches throughout the house.

Next is P. Ajeevan from St.Patrick’s College. He made many beautiful crafts using otherwise recycled items.

Third is Ragumar Tharun and M. Prathaban from Jaffna Hindu College. Their website to help researchers in their endeavors was another great project. It provides a forum with other researchers, information, and much more.

Finally, we have Sritharan Pushpakar from J/Hartley College. His COVID-19 safe sink is a great example of a solution to daily struggles under this “new normal”.

After a lot of hard work and navigating through tough questioning of judges the following were declared winners in the categories of Web, Mobile, Hardware, Innovation, and Application of Science. These winners had truly exceptional projects that shone above the rest. Their passion and dedication towards their projects were amazing, even during these uncertain times. Now, here are the winners (drumroll please)…..!

Best Web Application was won by Yathavan Seyavan, Selvakumar Kokulapirian, and Paramalingam Sathjaharan from J/Jaffna College. Their idea was a platform designed for free tutoring.

Best Mobile Application was won by a team from J/Jaffna College for their app, Piller, which prevents people from consuming the wrong medicine. The members of this team are Parameswaran Praveenan, Babu Brunthan, and Thayananthan Suman.

Best Hardware Application was won by M.Prathaban and Ragumar Tharun from the J/Jaffna Hindu College for their device that can help elderly people with exercise.

Best Application of Science was won by a one-man team from Kn/Ramanathapuram East G.T.M School, Jokakirinathan Sankeethan. His project was an effective mosquito killer.

Best Innovation Award was won by S.Vindujan from J/Jaffna Hindu College for his innovative COVID-19 safe washing area.

Kudos to all of the wonderful participants this year who persevered to showcase their projects at YGC9. Keep innovating!

Written by Rishathvik Ramoshan