Tudor Clee wins CREATE UNAOC 2012 Award for Touchable Earth App
Asia 21 Young Leader Tudor Clee won the CREATE UNAOC 2012 Award for his efforts in developing Touchable Earth, a world-atlas app.
Tudor has traveled around the world to gather information from children while developing Touchable Earth, and disseminated the app in Google Nexus tablets to the schools in places he visited.
“The idea came about in 2011 after I attended a conference focused on social entrepreneurship. I saw tablets as being an excellent tool for children's education” he says. Tudor was also invited to participate at the Asia 21 Summit in New Delhi in 2012, where he came up with the idea of “having kids in a country provide some information about themselves and their country,” during the Public Service Project component.
“I then saw the benefit of a structure, i.e. sections that are relevant to kids—e.g. family, school, play, culture as well as the basic facts.” He then contacted the largest schools organization in the world (www.iearn.org) and asked if they would help, and as luck would have it, iEarn International agreed and has introduced Tudor to schools in countries that he wanted to cover. He created chapters in China, India, Nepal, Romania, South Africa, and Iraqi Kurdistan. He had also gone back and donated tablets to the schools so that the children “can see themselves as well as the other children in other places who did the same work that they did.”
“I see the potential to build this out to every place in the world and create a network of the schools so the kids can connect. The Asia 21 meeting and PSP was the impetus to turn a loose idea into a something solid and scalable.” He says.
Touchable Earth is an application for tablets that provides engaging, hands-on information for children in countries across the world. The project has captured children in their authentic environments showcasing indigenous culture, schooling, friends, and every day facts about their country.
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