GP Innovate’s winner extols value of hard work
Published:Tuesday | January 16, 2024 | 12:09 AMAsha Wilks/Gleaner Writer
James Barrett, the leader of the winning team of the GP Innovate 2023 innovation competition, has praised organisers for their efforts in assisting inner-city youths, like himself, in realising their potential.
Barrett, a computer science major at the Northern Caribbean University, stated in an interview with The Gleaner yesterday that the competition was helpful in debunking the widespread belief that “links” are essential for a successful future.
Barrett, a resident of Salt Spring in Montego Bay, St James, stated that the competition had “opened” his mind to new ways of thinking, as it demonstrated to him the wealth of opportunities that exists in society.
“We as ghetto youths, we usually think that we would have to have links or we would have to come from a high status to advance in life and stuff like that, but, from this competition, it shows that, once you work hard and you put your mind to what you believe in, you can do great things,” he said.
The competition also taught him how to stand out from others and not become consumed with the idea of “following the crowd”. Barrett also learned how to effectively engage with others and to work as a team.
Barrett and his team members from the group dubbed ‘I-Learn’ received a cash prize of $500,000. Second- and third-place winners received cash prizes of $250,000 and $100,000, respectively.
The competition categories included agro-processing and manufacturing, technology, science, services and wildcard.
The other members of I-Learn include co-founder Dr Hazel O’Conner, an MBA graduate who has 15 years of experience in offering mentorship to start-up companies; Michael Small, a computer information systems major; and Theo Knight Tomlinson, a communications student.
GP Innovate is an annual innovation competition put on by Growth Perspectives Limited. It is designed to nurture the culture of innovation by providing a platform for university and college students in Jamaica to showcase their inventions and/or ideas.
While the competition offers cash prizes, participants also receive the opportunity to interact with potential long-term mentors, partners, and funders who can help to monetise their projects.
The competition’s first-place winners created a unique artificial intelligence (AI) platform to aid Jamaican high-school students in studying and preparing for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE).
Personal AI tutor
The exam preparation app, which is scheduled for release in September, is regarded as a personal AI tutor that not only gives users access to in-depth explanations of a topic which is accessible for 24 hours a day while they study, but it also helps to improve their understanding of the material, based on questions from CSEC or CAPE papers one and two, offers customised feedback that outlines the user’s strengths and weaknesses, and provides suggestions on how to improve on their areas of weakness.
Barrett further explained that one of the inspirations behind the creation of this “all-in-one package” in 2022 was learning from a report published by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) that roughly 37 per cent of Caribbean students passed mathematics, and that several other CSEC and CAPE exam passes had declined.
Dr Joel Allen, co-founder and executive chairman of Growth Perspectives Limited, informed The Gleaner that he had the idea of hosting an innovation competition in the Caribbean in 2019 while he was a final year PhD candidate in New Zealand.
He continued that he was then able to convince his fellow directors to host and support the competition.
When trying to get others to co-fund with them, no-one took up the offer and so they decided to fully fund it themselves, he said.
Director Dr Tayaza Fadason, genetic scientist and AI specialist who is originally from Nigeria, and a fellow PhD candidate and friend of Allen from the University of Auckland, played a major role in organising the innovation competition, he said.
“Innovation competitions are commonplace in New Zealand - where our three directors studied and worked. Myself, Tayaza, and Takeese, my wife and the company secretary ... have seen the great ideas that came out of competitions there and figured that similar competitions in the Caribbean could allow our young people to demonstrate this to others and have them fund or co-fund them - thus expanding our product and export base in the new economy,” Allen said.
While the competition was piloted in Jamaica, in the future, the organisers hope to expand it to a regional scale, so that university students from different countries can compete against one another and help to stimulate innovation in the Caribbean region.
“We also wanted to help to teach our people how to work together, given that innovation is complex and requires multiple skills. This makes innovation a team sport rather than an individualistic sport - in which Jamaica does very well,” he said.
Allen stated that the judges of GP Innovate found that the winning group’s idea was “relevant, timely and interesting, especially given the sub-optimal outcome derived by a large portion of the student population”.
They believed that the proposed approach to address the concerns raised would assist in boosting the academic achievement of Jamaican primary and secondary students, and better prepare more of them for higher education, technical training, and the workforce.