Sunday, November 21, 2021

Team including DLSU CE Faculty Wins Seed Grant from the YSEALI Smart Cities Regional Workshop


The Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI), launched by the U.S. Department of State, hosted the Smart Cities Regional Workshop last 24 July 2021 to 16 October 2021. The workshop included both synchronous and asynchronous sessions on smart cities, culminating in a project proposal-pitching activity.

The workshop’s objective is to enhance participants’ knowledge of smart cities as well as to explore how to involve civil society and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in smart city development in the region. The aim is to foster a strong network among participants and to encourage greater involvement from young leaders, civil society, and SMEs in smart city development, while increasing capacity of future leaders to develop sustainable solutions to urbanization challenges in the region, using digital and other tools.

A total of 50 participants, aged 20-35, coming from ASEAN member nations as well as Timor-Leste, were chosen. Six are from the Philippines, including Dr. Krister Ian Daniel Z. Roquel from the Department of Civil Engineering, De La Salle University, while the other Filipino participants came from various local academic and government institutions.

The workshop participants were grouped into different fields, namely: 1) Civil and Social, 2) Health and Well Being 3) Safety and Security, 4) Quality Environment, 5) Built Infrastructure, and 6) Industry and Innovation. The groups developed and pitched project proposals over the course of the workshop. The Y1-Built Infrastructure group won 2nd runner-up, which entitles them to a seed grant funding amounting to USD 4,000, while the 1st runner-up and winner gets USD 5000 and USD 6000, respectively.

A follow-up activity, designed for monitoring and ensuring that each team will carry out the proposed project effectively and in accordance with the initial goals and missions, has been scheduled to start on 02 December 2021. The teams who receive seed grant funding from the program will have to conduct the project and finish it by the timeline that they communicated during the Pitching Competition. The teams will need to update project progress to the Organizing Team during the months. The period of execution, performance and monitoring of the follow-up activity period will be until 30 June 2022.

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