The company D Link has announced its support for the initiativeDigitize your town”, created by RuralízaTech, a group of students and teachers committed to the demographic problem of emptied Spain. The proposal has had the approval of the Higher Technical School of Telecommunications Engineers (ETSIT) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM).
The challenge is aimed at students of 4th year of ESO and 1st year of Baccalaureate, who will contribute their ideas to contribute to the development and digitization of the so-called emptied Spain. The competition will have the participation of 14 educational centers from different provinces linked to rural areas, such as: Teruel, Segovia, Soria, Ávila, Guadalajara, Cuenca and Toledo. The 18 participating teams will develop ideas that, supported by technology, have a positive impact on the daily life of the inhabitants of rural areas (Internet access, agriculture 4.0, applications of digital technology, energy efficiency, etc). The competition started in December 2021 and ends in June 2022.
“In a fun way, we want to show the transformative role of science and technology. If students decide on new technologies, UPM can be part of the path to the final destination: becoming the engineers of the rural digital ecosystems of the future”, explains Santiago Iglesias, professor at ETSIT-UPM and one of the promoters of this initiative.
A key figure within the context of the competition is that of the close references, current UPM students (a large part with their roots in emptied Spain), who will act as mentors and will accompany and will guide the participating teams during the development of their proposals.
The objective of the project is to promote training in digital skills for the new generations of these territories, as well as to promote vocations Steam (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths). In the same way, it is intended that all the parties involved in the initiative become aware of the problem of depopulation in rural areas, seeing it as an attractive environment for entrepreneurship to which they can return and in which to develop their professional career.
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The initiative has the support of institutions such as Acción.org, which is already collaborating with the UPM when it comes to addressing the challenge of access to energy in isolated rural settings in other countries. D-Link collaborates by providing technical training to mentors —focused on how to provide Internet access and create areas with both WiFi and 4G/5G mobile data coverage in rural environments with difficult or impossible broadband access— and that later it will be given to the participants. In addition, D-Link has donated various products, aimed at home automation and new technologies, as part of the prizes that the winners of the competition will receive.
Anthony Navarrogeneral director of D-Link Iberia, has commented “It is an exciting project and we are very grateful to UPM for giving us the opportunity to participate, because training is one of the pillars of our corporate social responsibility». “At D-Link we have the necessary technology to facilitate Internet access in empty Spain with various ranges of 4G/5G devices, as well as access points that allow long-distance bridge radio links to extend coverage to villages or isolated areas. from Internet access nodes.
