LG's National CSR Initiative with Sharjah City for Humanitarian Services Inspires Students to Develop Mobile Apps for Individuals with Disabilities

Best Mobile Apps Catered for Individuals with Disabilities Recognised by Experts from the Quality of Life Technology (QoLT) Center at Seoul National University

Sharjah UAE, 25 November, 2015: In a bid to drive awareness and development of mobile assistive applications for individuals with disabilities, LG Electronics in association with the Seoul National University and the Sharjah City for Humanitarian Services have announced the winners of the Assistive Applications Design Competition held recently alongside ‘AT EDUCOM’. 

The first prize was won by the team from Zayed University for their app titled ‘Salem’. The app developed by the four member team including Abdalla BuAli, Asmaa Aldhawi, Noora Alawadi and Shaima Aljneibi helps individuals with memory loss to efficiently keep track of all important things, people and incidents of their life. It also empowers them with various short term memory enhancing games. The second prize was bagged by the team from the University of Sharjah for its ‘Jamayati’ app that is designed to enhance the cognitive skills of autistic children and individuals with intellectual disabilities.

As part of LG’s regional corporate social responsibility (CSR), the competition was launched with the Assistive Technology Center of Sharjah City of Humanitarian Services in a bid to spread awareness around the importance of assistive application technologies that empower people with disabilities. The competition was designed to build community engagement and motivate UAE university students and nurture them on developing and contributing new innovative applications which can truly enrich the lives and ensure independence for people with disabilities.

During the first phase of the community engagement program, over 40 university students across the country applied for the program with 17 brilliant students moving forward to the final round. The 17 finalists later took part in a two-week training program in August that trained them on developing android based applications using the flagship LG G4. Out of the 17 finalists, four key applications were developed as a direct result of the training, which were ranked at the awards ceremony. 

“For LG Electronics, this is an important cause for us and we are sincerely grateful for the remarkable support and cooperation the leading universities have provided to this noble community engagement initiative. This highly commendable competition has given UAE students across all nationalities a platform to use mobile technologies to help push boundaries and create a better world for people with disabilities to live in. CSR campaigns that make a real impact is fundamental to our operations in the region and this initiative further exemplifies our brand slogan that ‘Life is Good’ at all levels,” said Mr. D.Y.Kim, President of LG Electronics Gulf.

The awards ceremony was attended by His Excellency Sheikh Fahim Bin Sultan Al Qasimi and Her Excellency Sheikha Jameela AlQasimi, the General Director of Sharjah City of Humanitarian Services alongside 70 senior officials from universities across the country. In addition, the judging panel included Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Qasimi - General Manager of the EGOV department in Sharjah, Mr. Wooill Chung - CFO of LG Electronics Gulf Corporation, Professor Sangmook Lee from Quality of Life Technology (QoLT) center at Seoul National University, Ms. Rabab Abd Al Wahab from the Assistive Technology Center and Mr. Mohammed Alboulshi. 
Commenting at the award ceremony, Dr. Sang-Mook Lee, Professor, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Director of Quality of Life Technology Industrial Infrastructure Development Center at Seoul National University said, “I have been with the students in the training program in August and I found their performance extremely impressive. It was heartwarming to see their eagerness to build feasible assistive technology. According to me, all of the students are winners.” 

In this CSR initiative, the top winning teams from Zayed University and University of Sharjah bagged an all-expenses paid trip to visit LG’s world-renowned headquarters in Korea, and most importantly a golden opportunity to participate in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) conference, the largest computer science conference in Korea and other prizes.