The Technovation Challenge in Cameroon
The
Technovation Challenge teaches middle and high-school girls how to make an app
for an Android phone using AppInventor ( a program from MIT). This
12-week, online, after-school program is structured so that groups of girls and
their mentor (a women with at least two-years of work experience; not
necessarily in technology) go through the curriculum together and create an
app. Wrapped around the app creation program is the whole idea of a “lean
startup”. Once the teams have identified the problem which they are going to
solve, they are challenged to think about how their app will be placed in the
marketplace, how they will address competition, how their app rates against
other similar ones, what makes theirs edgier, more interesting, how they can
expand it etc. They are also taught presentation and pitching skills just
like a real start-up company would need!
The young women are encouraged to create apps that address a problem within their own community. Many of the problems are basic human struggles, such as stress, fitting in, and uncertainty. But the triggers and solutions vary greatly across communities. The stress of living in a slum is very different than the stress of being in an affluent high school, which leads to amazingly diverse apps to help people navigate through their world. The finalists chosen from around the world are invited to Silicon Valley to the World Pitch which was held at the Twitter headquarters last year. The group that wins the competition gets resources to develop their app for the market. Check out the finalists for this year's challenge which was held at the Intel headquarters and included a team from the University of Calgary as well as from Moldova, Nigera, South Korea, Brazil, and the US.
The young women are encouraged to create apps that address a problem within their own community. Many of the problems are basic human struggles, such as stress, fitting in, and uncertainty. But the triggers and solutions vary greatly across communities. The stress of living in a slum is very different than the stress of being in an affluent high school, which leads to amazingly diverse apps to help people navigate through their world. The finalists chosen from around the world are invited to Silicon Valley to the World Pitch which was held at the Twitter headquarters last year. The group that wins the competition gets resources to develop their app for the market. Check out the finalists for this year's challenge which was held at the Intel headquarters and included a team from the University of Calgary as well as from Moldova, Nigera, South Korea, Brazil, and the US.
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