The Innovation Camp is an intellectual and creative playground for freshmen and sophomores to promote the ability to work in groups and the ability to apply the knowledge in practice, to be able to nurture the spirit of innovation and creativity of the young generation because this is an intangible asset, very precious and is the key to your success in study and future career – having just undergone the exciting activities from December 13 to 19, 2021. Let’s take a look at the journey of all students who have experienced the program.

Introduction information about IU Innovation camp 2021

On the evening of November 14, 2021, the IU Innovation Camp 2021 information session took place online to introduce the most detailed information about this year’s program as well as answer questions about the program from the students.

The guests’ participation includes the units accompanying the program, the representatives of the School Board of Directors, the representatives of innovative start-up units in Ho Chi Minh City, the representatives of Youth Unions – Student Associations from other schools, and the students who are interested in the program. At the beginning of the program, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Le Van Canh – Assoc. The principal of International University – also affirmed that “IU Innovation Camp is an outstanding program of International University”.

Ly Phuong Thanh – A senior at the School of Business Administration, an exchange student in Europe – and Nguyen Le Ly Na – A junior at the School of Business Administration, co-founder of the World Giving Love project – shared their personal experiences when participating in IU Innovation Camp 2019 as well as her achievements since joining the program.

Opening ceremony of IU Innovation camp 2021

The camp has received the attention of many teachers, especially the students from VNU-HCM and other universities in the city. After the registration period, the camp had 51 teams participating in the competition, corresponding to 228 candidates from 15 universities in the city area. HCM. The program had a solemn online opening ceremony on December 13, 2021 – The start of the camp which last 1 week from December 13 to December 19, 2021, with a lot of interesting and useful activities.

The camp was accompanied by the gold sponsor Vietcombank, the companion unit of the iZi.Community Platform and the Innovative Entrepreneurship Center VNU-HCM (IEC), as well as the founders of startups or innovative start-up organizations, and alumni who participated as speakers took their valuable time to share and have a discussion with students.

At the Opening Ceremony at noon on December 13, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Tien Khoa – Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee, Principal of IU – delivered a speech and message to all campers: “With the theme “Fix it for me” based on Maslow’s 5-level human needs pyramid model, this is an opportunity for students to be creative and come up with ideas to solve their problems during a long time of online learning and for the most part, in the new normal state after the covid-19 pandemic”.

Some photos of Guests, teachers and campers participating in the Opening Ceremony.

A series of programs and activities within the framework of the camp

The seminar “Entrepreneur journey” was organized by IU in collaboration with Innovative Entrepreneurship Center VNU-HCM on December 13. The program was organized with a coordinator Ms. Phan Nguyen Nguyet Truc Dao (Founder and CEO of iZi.Community) together with the 3 expert speakers Mr. Tran Viet Hung (Founder and Chairman of Got It), Mr. Le Yen Thanh (CEO of Phenikaa MaaS) and Mr. Pham Duc Nam Trung (Finance Director of Dat Bike). The speakers shared their perspectives on innovative thinking while the students asked a lot of questions to discuss with the “young leaders”.

Entrepreneur journey is organized with impressive speakers

During the night on the same day, the “Enter Camp” activity took place in a lively and creative online form on the Gather.town platform. Here, campers had their first meeting to get the program information, instructions on how to use online tools, and more importantly, the experience as well as to get acquainted with the Gather.town platform.

Campers entered camp on December 13, 2021

Nearly 300 campers with the organizers gathered on “Enter Camp” night

During 1 week of the camp, in addition to participating in many interesting activities, the campers also had the opportunity to participate in a series of skill training sessions including teamwork skills, online effective working skills, and design thinking on December 14, 15, and 16. The trainers are all professionals with experience in different fields. After the training sessions, campers were also given short quizzes on iZi.community to review their knowledge.

The experts trained different skills for this year’s campers

The series of “Daily Challenges”, which are activities for students to introduce themselves, get acquainted, and share useful information, took place on the morning of December 14-16. Based on the achievements of these 3 challenges, on December 17, campers continued with the “Creative Space” activity, where teams made creative products from familiar objects in their house, and these products were displayed and voted on the iZi.Community platform.

Challenges are mademade for the teams every day

To strengthen the interconnection and networking among the teams, guests and organizers, the camp also has online meetings such as Coffee time, Gathering sessions, online “Campfire”, and “Memory paper” – where campers record their new experiences during their participation and share their interesting stories with other campers in the form of diaries.

“Campfire” activity – Online campfire

The “Explosion” contest, which is the main activity of the Camp, took place on 2 days (December 18 and 19). This year’s camp focuses on the authenticity of the story behind each idea, creativity, teamwork, and problem-solving ability based on the students’ learning, exploration, and passion. At the “Explosion” competition, the teams raced against time for 6 hours to discuss and come up with ideas to solve their own and the community’s problems.

Round 1’s discussion on Gather.town

In the final round, the best ideas from 20 teams were presented to the Board of examiners to win the high prizes. The contest is supported by the Advisory Board including young entrepreneurs and alumni of IU. The Board of examiners includes representatives of the school’s Board of Directors, teachers, and representatives of innovation startup units.

Teams were presenting the ideas based on the 5 levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs

Closing ceremony and the result summary

After 7 days of effective and creative activities such as the seminar “Entrepreneur journey”, the contest “Explosion”, “soft skills training series”, “daily challenge series”, ” creative space” along with networking activities and interesting experiences on Gather town, the whole camp collected 57 creative products, more than 40 ideas from the Explosion contest, and 13 lively networking activities through the online platforms.

M.S. Nguyen Dang Quang – Secretary of the Youth Union of IU – awarded the Innovation Winner to the Flipped team

Team Pentageeks is also one of the winners Camp’ss Explosion Contest of this year

“Nhung con cu Mien Trung” was also honored to be awarded the Innovation Winner in the Explosion contest in the 2021 camp

Scarlet team is also one of the winners

Team Lagom won the Grand Prize of the competition and was awarded by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Le Van Canh – Assoc. Principal of IU

This is the first virtual Innovation camping to be entirely applied in the online form. It was over with great success through many useful activities which bring excitement to the participants and promote creativity among students. Besides, the camp is also a place for students to have time for networking, learning, and being exposed to the activities, the contests that took place at the camp. Let’s look forward to the upcoming surprises in the next season.

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