The Mohammed Bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity is the brains behind the Global Maker Challenge, which selected the Rumie Initiative as the winner last year. The Global Maker Challenge asks businesses to come with innovative ways to tackle some of the world's more pressing problems such as developing sustainable energy and sustainable cities, reducing world hunger, and improving literacy and digital literacy around the world.
Those who compete for the digital literacy award are asked to develop a proposal that would find a way to promote and scale existing technologies around the world while connecting people around the world to the internet. The proposal should make it affordable for residents of underserved communities to access technologies through easy to deploy strategies and products. Finally, the proposal should have a plan to empower those in underserved communities to overcome barriers to digital literacy.
The 2019 winner of the Global Maker Challenge was the Rumie Initiative which focuses on providing underserved communities with access to technology. In North Bay, Canada, Rumie Initiative has assisted speakers of Indigenous languages to share their Anishnaabe teachings with this generation of digital learners. In Syria, the initiative distributed tablets to help students prepare for in-class exams at school. The organization helped parents in Guatemala become literate alongside their children.
