UTS Law students build solutions to support the public good

Article – website
Written By
Hasan Choudhary
Global Marketing Executive
UTS Law students build solutions to support the public good

Four teams of law students at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) recently completed the solutions they built this semester in Neota for nonprofit clients. The students presented their solutions at the showcase event of the UTS Allens Neota Law Tech Challenge for Social Justice, which is an annual program at UTS Law in which students work with nonprofits to create digital solutions to help people in need.

The Dean of UTS Law, Professor Anita Stuhmacke, told the showcase audience, “This Challenge is the epitome of one of the key skills we want our students to take from their degree: to understand and engage with technology and to do so for the public good.”

After the four student teams presented their solutions to a panel of judges at the showcase event, the team of Alex Graham, Mariana Isaac, Daron Manoukian, Hope Siciliano, and Selene Vuong (shown below) took the top prize for the AIME CheckProtect Portal, which advises nonprofit workers on their rights regarding a state-issued security clearance for working with children in AU. Among other things, the tool provides guidance on whether the user’s local clearance will be honored in another state or territory — and if so, for how long.

A separate award for best social media promotion of a solution went to the team of Saja Al-Zaamily, Rianne Hamad, Sai Muthukumar, Sami Urquhart, and Georgia Zocco, who worked with the Capital Punishment Justice Project (CPJP) to develop My Personal Guide to Supporting Justice with CPJPThis solution has multiple functions, including the creation of a tailored explanation of the impact of the death penalty on the user — and enabling the user to select and send a tailored message to a variety of public officials regarding the death penalty.

The other two tools in the competition, which the judges praised highly, were:
 
Opportunities Australia Mentoring Program Intake System: Students Salvador Arce, Jason Claughton, Fauzia Hussein, Wendy Lam, and Zoe Said created this intake-and-analysis solution for Opportunities Australia (OA), which pairs underprivileged people with mentors in AU. The solution interviews prospective mentors and mentees and assigns each a personality score, which OA will use when making matches between mentors and mentees. The tool also applies logic to flag combinations of inputs that OA deems to be a “red flag,” which helps OA fulfil its extensive due-diligence obligations.

SPELD Student Profile Generator: Students Morwarid Faiz, Maria Hakim, Harrison Luke, John Pak, and Cassandra Reilly created their solution for SPELD, which supports children and adults with learning disabilities in New South Wales. The tool enables parents and teachers to quickly draft a document that identifies appropriate potential adjustments for the student’s curriculum. The solution reduces hours of manual drafting work to just a few minutes and ensures that the draft is based on expert insights that are narrowly tailored for the student’s situation.

Neota’s Chief Commercial Officer, Jackson Liu, said, “We’re very proud of our partnership with UTS and Allens and the outcomes we’ve been able to achieve for nonprofits through this Challenge. Our partnerships with universities and nonprofits are critical to Neota’s long-term mission of improving access to justice through technology.”

To learn more about the solutions and the UTS Allens Neota program, see this UTS news article.

To watch the entire showcase event, click here.

For more photos from the showcase event, click here.

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