The Imagine Cup from Microsoft

We know all about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but his company Microsoft also does some things to help poverty fight. Microsoft organizes the "Imagine Cup" that invites teens to submit technological advancements that can help the environment or those in poverty.

From Monday Morning, we learn more about the competition and one example of one of the entries.

“They really are taking on all these problems”, Joe Wilson, Microsoft senior director of academic initiatives, told media prior to the finals.

“This audience wants social change in a way generations before didn’t, and innovations in technology are coming from these people who live with it, not from the guys in the corporations”.

More than 300,000 students from some 110 countries competed in the greatest turnout seen at the Imagine Cup since it was launched in 2002.

Teams containing a total of 444 college students faced off in Cairo on July 9 for top spots in nine categories, including software design, robotics and game development.

“It’s befitting that we do this here in Cairo”, said Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Evangelism Group. “Egypt is the cradle of civilization”.
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Team Wafree from South Korea won top honors in an “embedded” category for creating an easy-to-use machine for raising insects that can be used as food sources in parts of the world where fertile land and water are scarce.

Each winning team gets 25,000 dollars to divide between members as they see fit, according to Microsoft.