 In March 2020, Engineers Without Borders USA and the Response Innovation Lab launched the Solid Soap Dispenser Challenge. Young innovators were given the challenge to develop a locally sourced, low-cost solution for the provision of solid soap at hand-washing stations in public spaces. 31 innovators participated. Challenge winner Ali Kabona tells his story. My name is Ali Kabona. I'm 25 years old. I'm a student at Makere University in Uganda and I'm in my final year doing telecommunications engineering. When I was a child, I thought about that when I grow up, I'll become an inventor as my future career. When I saw the challenge, my first thought was, it was like, this is my chance. I wanted to invent something that could solve the problem, something that could work for the people. I thought about doing a solid soap dispenser which is operated by a fork or a pedo. A pedo, you just step on a pedo, then the freaks come out of the box. When I installed that in the internet market, people said that maybe it takes time, that no one would spend a lot of time on that. So there was a little bit negative feedback from people in the market. So I was a little bit challenged. I had to rapidly think to come up with a new design. But at the back of my mind, I had a second idea. I had phase two. So if phase one fails, I go to phase two. So I was lucky because I had phase two whereby you could access the solid soap using your palm. It became the final design obviously. When I was very, very, very excited, it has not been easy. I can't imagine myself solving human problems with my innovation ideas. I'm very proud of my innovation.