iKapture Center for Development is a proud host and organizing partner of the Technovation Challenge program in Calabar, Nigeria. Through our Founder, Miss Grace Ihejiamaizu, who serves as a Technovation Calabar Regional Ambassador, we are able to work with Technovation to support women and girls in technology.
Technovation is a global technology entrepreneurship program for girls that challenges them to identify and solve a community problem through the development of a mobile app. The girls have spent the last five months participating in the program and will take the stage to explain how their ideas will solve community problems like poor quality of education, lack of healthcare services, fake food products and more.
In 2019, for the first time, the Regional Pitch event holds in Calabar. The Regional Pitch Event creates a platform for the local community to come together and experience firsthand the innovative solutions and ideas created by young entrepreneurs and to celebrate their learning. It is an opportunity to recognize the amazing effort put forth by mentors, teachers, parents and families to ensure that girls feel inspired and supported during the program — and hopefully long after it. Most importantly, girls pitch their app ideas to receive feedback and scores from local judges, gaining important in-person pitching experience and standing the chance to proceed to the semi-finalist stage.
The participating teams will be competing for the opportunity to attend the annual Technovation World Pitch Summit in August 2019 held in Silicon Valley. There, 12 teams from around the world will be flown in and invited to pitch their apps and business plans to a panel of tech industry experts for a chance to win scholarships to advance their education in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects.
This is the ninth season of Technovation globally and the first season of Technovation in Calabar.
After participating in Technovation, 70% of girls globally are interested in pursuing further technology related programs. In the U.S., 60% of girls enroll in further Computer Science courses with 30% majoring in Computer Science in college, 65 times the national rate for US female college students.
About Iridescent and Technovation
Iridescent is a global technology & engineering education nonprofit that empowers underrepresented young people and their families to become self-motivated learners, inventors, and leaders. Founded in 2006 by CEO Tara Chklovski, Iridescent has had more than 100,000 children, parents, mentors, and educators participate in its two global programs: Technovation, the world’s largest global tech entrepreneurship program for girls, and Curiosity Machine, a unique, open-ended, project-based learning program that inspires students, families, and teachers to create science and engineering solutions together. Through Technovation, girls work in teams to identify a real-world community problem and then build an app and a business plan that solves that problem. In 2017, Iridescent was co-recognized along with Technovation Global Ambassador Anar Simpson for Outstanding Mobile Industry Individual Leadership at the GSMA Women4Tech awards. Technovation was profiled in CodeGirl, a documentary directed by Lesley Chilcott.
