Meaningful engagement of its sizable youth population in the development process is key for Sri Lanka to accelerate efforts of realizing the ambitious 2030 agenda.
In a rapidly changing development landscape, the role of innovation and entrepreneurship is similarly central to achieving the same, with digital technology a key enabler in the process. If our nation is to find different solutions to the problems we have struggled to eliminate for decades on end, citizens and especially youth, a demographic with a significant stake in a country’s trajectory, need systems and platforms to utilize their many talents and make a lasting contribution to the development.
HackaDev offers a range of opportunities that are social innovation challenges that provide a platform for young people across the island to generate, present and develop their social innovation ideas, ultimately converting them into sustainable enterprises, aimed at solving crucial development challenges faced by their community or country as a whole.
These include flagship programmes such as the HackaDev National Youth Social Innovation Challenge, The Generation Unlimited Youth Challenge and other ad hoc innovation challenges such as the COVID-19 Innovation Challenge.
Identifying the increasing opportunity of imparting knowledge, building skills and changing mindsets of Sri Lanka’s youth population, HackaDev established its own ‘HackaDev Learning and Skills Academy’ building on the success of its first flagship initiative the ‘Technopreneurship for Social Change’.
It offers a package of next-generation learning and skills programmes ranging from Entrepreneurship, Media Literacy, Design Thinking, Innovation and many more.
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
202-204, Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo 00700. Sri Lanka
Phone: 011 258 0691
Email: innovations.lk[@]undp.org
