 
“No, I didn’t feel like Bill Gates…. Honestly, I didn’t feel like a UWI student at an undergraduate level could impact the society in this way.”
Three years ago Jesse Saitoo, a Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering final year student, was overwhelmed at the outpouring of delight and gratitude from the beneficiaries of an app he had produced. For the visually impaired in Trinidad and Tobago, his app - Maverick - gives them independence in financial transactions. The app, based on facial recognition algorithms, allows the visually impaired to identify local currency without assistance from the sighted.
Jesse’s app is a perfect example of social innovation – a novel tool that benefits people’s lives. And, yes, this is happening right here at the St. Augustine Campus. At just 22, Jesse truly understood what it meant to innovate not just for profit, but to meet pressing unmet needs and improve the lives of people.
Our vision here at St. Augustine of an education system for sustainable development has driven this Campus’ initiatives to reform its curriculum and pedagogy, to overhaul its supportive business processes and to change Campus culture to one that is more entrepreneurial in outlook. By seeing ourselves as innovators and entrepreneurs, we are committed to using research, knowledge, and innate creativity to deliver solutions to issues plaguing Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean, and the world.
Kevin Chika Urama and Ernest Nti Acheampong, in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Summer 2013) argue that “a prosperous society consists of economic prosperity and social prosperity combined”. They put forward the case – if one were needed – for social innovation:
“Rarely has the need for new ways of thinking been more glaring. From the sluggish economic growth and financial instability of the last several years to the perennial issues of political upheaval, resource crises, hunger, poverty, and disease, people have come to realize that the old ways of doing things no longer work.”
Take, for example, our research outputs in agriculture. There can be no disagreement that agriculture should be the backbone of any society. If strategically engaged, agriculture could, at the very least, provide an effective level of food security but could also be a strong export earner. In times such as these, where foreign exchange is exceedingly scarce, it is therefore imperative that our focus on innovation, entrepreneurship, and commercialisation in strategically determined areas, such as agriculture, is sharpened and given the support it desperately needs.
Another example of collaboration on this Campus for social innovation is AgriNeTT - an Agriculture ICT project, funded by The UWI-Trinidad & Tobago Research and Development Impact (RDI) Fund.
AgriNeTT, a collaboration between The UWI’s Department of Computing & Information Technology, the Faculty of Food and Agriculture as well as representatives of industry in the agriculture sector, provides yet another example of social innovation. AgriNeTT is an Agriculture ICT project, funded by The UWI-Trinidad & Tobago Research and Development Impact (RDI) Fund. The project engages in research and development on Intelligent Decision Support apps for Enhancing Crop Management. AgriNeTT apps can be downloaded from the Google App Store and include AgriExpense for managing finances and monitoring crop production, AgriMaps that provides soil characteristics of any identified parcel of land and also enables the user to make informed decisions on the best crops for planting on the identified area, and AgriPrice for monitoring the daily crop prices. The benefits to the agriculture industry are clearly nothing less than tremendous.
Then there is ‘Project mFisheries’, conducted by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and funded by International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The focus of ‘mFisheries’ is on support for the small scale fisheries industry in the Caribbean, with particular emphasis on Trinidad and Tobago. It is developing capacity in the Caribbean to pursue opportunities arising from the provision of innovative mobile-enabled services for small scale fisher folk, and providing related empirical data and analysis to inform Caribbean policy and regulation.
My final example looks at how we are redefining our social outreach and engagement within our fence-line community of Farm Road, St. Joseph.
For 70 years, this regional University has been a tool for sustained Caribbean development. And, for 70 years, the St. Augustine Campus has been an integral part of the Tunapuna/Piarco region.
It is only fitting that, in celebrating our seven decade tradition of service to the Caribbean, the St. Augustine Campus include a main constituent. This line of thought led to the launch of The UWI/Farm Road Collaborative Project, a story in this issue of UWI Today.
Through this collaboration, UWI is developing an innovative model of social work education and practice. Our social work students are given the opportunity to complete their practicum hours in the community through hands-on service-learning, with the goals of developing the students’ skills and commitment to community service while developing a mutually beneficial relationship between the University and the community. Through this model, students in the entire University community can participate in in-service learning and engagement in a community.
According to research estimates, 70% of the population in Farm Road falls within the at-risk range of 12-29 years of age. It is a young community. The UWI/Farm Road collaboration will work to improve the education, health and well-being of residents in the community by empowering them to enact social change through training, research, and community mobilization.
Together we – UWI and Farm Road - will forge a unique participatory model of intervention over the next five years. The result of this will be a locally designed and tested intervention model for university/community/civil society partnership, which can be replicated in communities with similar needs in Trinidad and Tobago.
This collaboration is not about tokenism. It is about achieving a shared sense of community spirit and cohesion. Indeed, community members already assist in planning and coordinating activities. In time, we expect that a community liaison committee will be formalized to ensure the continued life and strength of the project.
This is academia in action, moving theory into practice.
We are UWI and we are building a nation and a Caribbean that are both economically and socially prosperous.
Do enjoy the issue!
Professor Brian Copeland
Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal
EDITORIAL TEAM
Campus Principal: Professor Brian Copeland
Director of Marketing and Communications: Dr. Dawn-Marie De
Four-Gill
Editor: Vaneisa Baksh (Email: vaneisa.baksh@sta.uwi.edu )
Acting Editor: Shereen Ann Ali (Email: ann.ali@sta.uwi.edu )
Contact us:
The UWI Marketing and Communications Office
Tel: (868) 662-2002 exts. 82013, 83997
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