KolpoKoushol: A Knowledge Initiative

The World Bank's Knowledge Economic Index ranks innovation in Bangladesh at 191 and shows a long and winding road ahead for innovation and technology here.

Kolpokoushol is a platform to bring together young minds of Bangladesh and the students and alumni of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to inspire, develop and organise new ideas. The initiative aims to encourage participants to acquire a variety of skills, and employ those towards solving community specific problems.

A PhD student at MIT Media Lab and founder of KolpoKoushol, Nazmus Saquib explains what the workshop plans to achieve: "KolpoKoushol roughly translates to 'imagination engineering'. I think that students here are too grade-oriented. Research and innovation skills are completely different from the skills that can get you a straight-A. Imagination, creative thinking and diverse skills are more important for innovation. KolpoKoushol aims to foster a multidisciplinary research and innovation philosophy. Our engineers, entrepreneurs and policy-makers should know how to approach a problem from different perspectives and work in a multidisciplinary team."

The team at KolpoKoushol includes of Bangladeshi alumni and current students of MIT. Ehsan Hoque (Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Rochester University, MIT Media Lab PhD '13), Shammi S. Quddus (MIT '10), and Sujoy Kumar Chowdhury (Product Manager, Microsoft, MIT Media Lab alumnus) will be Advisors. Tamanna Islam Urmi (MIT '16) and Sumaiya Nazeen (PhD student, MIT EECS) will be the Programme Managers.

Founder of Toru (the facilitating organisation behind KolpoKoushol), Saif Kamal, explains why this initiative is necessary: "At the base of innovation and social enterprises are network and knowledge – that is what Bangladesh is missing. We require multiple networks of international and local organisations and institutes who can develop the youth's capacity to transform ideas into enterprises. Ultimately, we are trying to build alumni of innovators and help them grow so that they go on to become the agents of social change." 

The desired outcome of the initiative is to deploy decentralised and autonomous R&D labs network that provide technology-based solution to community problems. These community-based, local R&D labs will be connected to the workshop alumni and mentors, enabling further technical and logistical help.

KolpoKoushol will inaugurate with a 6-day workshop (July 23 - July 28, 2015) for students in the undergraduate level in Bangladesh, and promises this to be the first of a series of workshops that they intend to organise in the future. 

The topics will include rapid idea generation techniques, product design and development, rapid hardware prototyping, advanced topics in artificial intelligence, and augmented reality.

The workshop requires their participants to be creative and is open to students, young professionals and those who have a strong background and interest in engineering and sciences. If you have ever felt like a misfit in the traditional academic system: this one is for you. 

Ishrat Jahan writes things and often gets mistaken for a 12-year-old. When she isn't living inside a book, she tries to understand economics. You can reach her at: ishrat.jahan1620@gmail.com