Invisible Hands Deliver was born when college students amassed 1,700 healthy volunteers to deliver groceries and medicines to the Covid-19 high-risk people in New York City. The focus is mostly the elderly and immunocompromised people but also all others in need.

Students’ welfare is endangered because of stress and struggles related to financial issues or the workload of their courses mixed with jobs or extra-curricula activities. After a student at the University of Manchester’s School of Physics and Astronomy committed suicide, Dr Andrew Markwick, came up with StudentCRT, a system that allows lecturers and other university staff to view and amend different data on the students that related to their wellbeing.

Inspired by a former professional athlete, Prof. Hossein Rouhani from the mechanical engineering department at the University of Alberta, helped by Michael Xiu, a top student from China, is developing wearable technology to aid in athletic assessment and rehabilitation.

"Because of the incorrect or sub-optimal training he received during his childhood, later on after a few decades he suffered from muscular-skeletal injuries that led to his early retirement," Rouhani said referring to the former athlete.

Greyson Watkins suffering from deafness, created Wavio in 2015 when he moved out and faced the challenges of unintentionally making too much noise, or not hearing his girlfriend’s daughter cry.

Wavio is a sound capturing unit connected to the home Wi-Fi system. The device can be programmed to recognize any sound from the doorbell to a crying babe, and its sensitivity can be customised. When Wavio detects a programmed sound, it sends an alert to the connected device (e.g. smartphone, laptop etc.). Users can receive the alert on their devices by downloading the app.

Because door handles are among the most germ-ingested objects, a team at Materialise developed a tool that allows to open doors without using hands.

The easy-to-use openers do not require drilling holes or replacing doors’ handles. The tool is composed by two 3D printed pieces fasted together with screw over the existing handle. These door openers can get contaminates, just like the door handle, so they should be disinfected regularly.

Lual Mayen, a former refugee from South Sudan, built the video game Salaam that puts the player in the shoes of a refugee forced to flee a war-torn region.

The aim of the video game is to drive a generational shift in mindset inspiring a sustainable peace. Moreover, when purchasing food, water, and medicine in the game, the proceeds will be sent to help people living in refugee camps.

The Belgian robotic firm, ZoraBots, is lending robots for free to elderly care homes to help residents stay connected despite the ban on visits imposed to fight the spread of Coronavirus.
The robot is a 1.2-metre-tall butler-style machine that can navigate rooms and connect video calls through Facebook messenger.

"We said, in the coming weeks we will not be able to sell, the stock is just going to sit here. Instead of letting the stock sit here, why not put it to use in a good way?" said Zorabots co-CEO Tommy Deblieck.

David Hayden, a freshman double-majoring in math and computer science at Arizona State University, is visually impaired because of a condition that prevents optic nerves to fully develop, the bilateral optic nerve hypoplasia. This condition prevents to see and focus details which are a few feet away. Students with this condition often use a monocular to see the board but they do not always follow the class easily.

Aly Orady graduated from college at 19 and pursued a successful career in tech but he was neglecting his health. Aly developed type 2 diabetes and was suffering from sleep apnea. After he reached a breaking point, in 2013 he quit his job to focus on his health. He started by losing weight, in nine months he lost 70 pounds. "It transformed my life in more ways than I could ever explain," Aly says. When it was time to go back to work, he had to find a balance between his working out schedule and his job, that is when, in 2015, he came up with the idea of Tonal.

In many places, menstruation is still a barrier that prevents women to work and go to school. Also, health is at stake because of poor hygiene conditions. Sabrina Rubli and Ornella Marinic discovered the problem while they were working on their postgraduate degree, researching water and sanitation in Kenya. In 2013, they founded the Femme International non-governmental organisation to develop solutions for women.

Simon Wheatcroft is an ultra-marathon runner born with a genetic degenerative eye condition, retinitis pigmentosa, and lost his sight at 17. "I started running for something to do. I used a guide dog to run outside or went running with other people," he says. To help him run solo, he developed an app, called eAscot, collaborating with IBM Bluemix.

John Gardner, a physicist at Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis, was blind in one eye but he became completely blind after having surgery to remove the pressure of his good eye. John’s job involved interpreting graphs precisely, “Getting it exactly right all the time was incredibly important,” John explained. However, when he became blind in 1988, he had to approach his job differently.

Although Lorenzo suffers from a complex neurological disease that affects his ability to perform daily tasks, he is a very active kid. When he asked for a bicycle, Lorenzo's parents started the research but the options in the market were too expensive. After consulting Lorenzo’s physiotherapist, a team of collaborators from the Together to Go Foundation and the fablab Opendot, designed an affordable bicycle for Lorenzo.

Many visually impaired students from India struggle to find inclusive schools to pursue their education. The main reason relies on the lack of resources of the education system that miss giving these students the support they need. Lack of education affects also employability of visually impaired people. To overcome the social challenges stemmed by a weak education system, a team of recent graduates, Akshita, Bonny, and Abhishek, developed ‘Kibo’ to help the visually impaired access written content.

Jamie Lee Curtis is an actress and a mum. She is often on the move and well aware of how many things are needed for a complete baby routine. One day, while she was changing her daughter’s diaper far from the wipes, Jamie came up with the idea of a diaper-wiper garment. "In that moment, I said, 'Aha, I have to invent a diaper that has a wiper built into the diaper.' And I invented Dipe and Wipe, and I patented it," Jamie said.

Re’em Haneman is a London student who bikes daily to the University. To prevent strain injuries and inspire other people to cycle, he designed a new city bicycle, the CY-GO project.

Lora Brugnaro suffers from cerebral palsy that compromises her balance. She has been using available-on-the-market walkers, but they are usually unstable and not fulfilling her needs. During the sixth Assistive Technologies Hackathon (ATHack), an event organised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was paired with some MIT students and they created a more stable walker.

"I have felt for a very long time that the daily choice I made between safety and living with the freedom to move was an unnecessary choice predicated on poor design," Lora said.

Deborah Mellen suffered from a spinal cord injury after a car accident but this did not stop her passion for sailing. She purchased a custom-made, universally accessible catamaran, the Impossible Dream and founded a no-profit organisation offering charter services to those who, like her, have mobility issues.

After serving his country in Afghanistan and Antarctica, Jason Loughran relied on the support of his family and friends to transition back to normal life. Now he is a veteran and a mentor volunteer at the College of Staten Islands. However, not all veterans recover, many struggle all their life and are at high risk for suicide. Knowing Jason’s story and the situation in the USA, his students, Anthony, Mark, Egor, and Vicent, at the College of Staten Islands, focused on the veterans’ struggle for a contest on IMB technology, the CUNY-IBM Watson Social Impact Challenge.

When Kevin Szura was three months old, he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy which gave him some physical limitations. Kevin worked in a ‘prevocational facility’ that provides employment for people living with disabilities, but he was feeling marginalised and undervalued. Tyler, Kevin’s younger brother, who has always been helping him, tried to come up with an idea to give Kevin fair employment and increase his engagement in the society. This is how the tkMomentum no-profit organisation was born.