Projects of Turkmen Youth Win Gold Medals at Prestigious International Competition

At the end of September, in Cyberjaya, Malaysia, under the organization of the Turkmenistan Youth Scientists Association and Multimedia University, the World Sustainable Development Goals Challenge (WSDG 2025) was held. Fourth-year students of the Turkmenistan Institute of Telecommunications and Informatics, Baynazar Muhammedov and Jeyhun Jumashov, participated with their joint project titled “HeartStep: Developing Speech Skills in Children with Early Speech Delay.” This project was awarded the “Grand Prize Runner-up,” a gold medal, a cash prize for further development, and an invitation to the Kingdom of Thailand.

It is worth noting that the mobile application has been operational for over one and a half years. The important project is based on a medical approach to help children with speech difficulties and was developed in consultation with speech therapists, child psychologists, and relevant medical specialists. The app is a compact package that helps develop speech skills in both Turkmen and Russian languages and can be used by all children.

The competition received over 2,100 project submissions from 17 countries, including Turkmenistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Romania, Brazil, El Salvador, Kazakhstan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, UAE, Egypt, India, Palestine, Vietnam, and Guatemala.

This mobile product, which the students have been refining for two years, is written in the Flutter programming language. Last year, it won the “Digital Solution — 2024” award and was a winner at innovation competitions held in the Russian Federation. Additionally, it took second place in the Turkmen youth “ICT Startup: Innovative Technologies for Sustainable Development” competition.

Another notable achievement by Turkmen youth at the Malaysian competition was the gold medal awarded to Ihlas Kurbanov, a second-year student of the Agriculture (Engineer-Teacher Training) faculty at the Turkmen Agricultural University named after S.A. Niyazov. He participated with a project called “Synçy,” a website designed to facilitate communication between authors and readers.

The “Synçy” project aligns with Sustainable Development Goal 4 — “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

The website plays a significant role in improving the quality of books and encouraging a love of reading. Authors upload their books and writings to the site, while readers leave ratings and feedback, which helps identify errors and improve the texts. The site fosters stronger interaction between authors and readers. Its structure is built using HTML, the design uses CSS, functionality is powered by JavaScript, and the server-side logic is implemented with the Django-Python framework.

The international panel of judges highly praised these projects and wished them success in their further development.