Schoolgirls from All Over Ukraine Presented in Lviv their Problem-Solving IT-Projects

Twenty-five girls from all over Ukraine presented innovative IT-projects aimed at solving various urban problems. The presentation took place in Technovation Summer Camp, organized by Western NIS Enterprise Fund in cooperation with Peace Corps Ukraine in the course of the Technovation Ukraine project.

The girls came with a number of mobile application projects bearing significant social impact, namely an application that, by using big data, finds interesting school program learning content, which is not included in the textbooks; an application that identifies the closest points of waste separation in the city; an application that finds the necessary medicines in all hospitals of the city, and many others.

“Western NIS Enterprise Fund is convinced that Ukraine needs to pay particular attention to women’s leadership. Technovation Summer Camp is one in the major initiatives that helps girls understand their role in society, break all the stereotypes about women that the environment impose and make this world a better place. The camp gave them a chance to see various aspects of life where IT can be an effective tool of qualitative changes”, said Iryna Ozymok, Local Economic Development Program Manager of Western NIS Enterprise Fund.

Technovation Summer Camp is a camp-like programming school for adolescent girls from all over Ukraine. This year Lviv houses this school from 24 till 30 July. Girls work with the experienced mentors to develop their own mobile applications – programs and solutions aimed to fight the community problems of their cities and serve for the improvement of municipal services. The camp has brought together 25 girls aged 14-17 years from all over Ukraine, who were selected on a competitive basis (3 candidates per place). The girls are given intensive training in coding, STEM skills and business modeling; they’ve already visited the City Council and several IT-companies in Lviv, as well as the “Fest” company and the “Republic” plant.

“The experience that we gained here has a much greater effect than as if we’d read 50 books at home. By networking with innovative and progressive people, we’ve got inspired for change, we’ve discovered new opportunities, and now we can clearly see that all our ideas can be implemented,” commented Khrystyna Sosiak, a student of Ivano-Frankivsk school №2, a participant at Technovation Summer Camp.

 “The idea of the camp came to Peace Corps volunteers who helped and mentored the girl teams during the IT-entrepreneurship competition for schoolgirls, called Technovation Challenge. Owing to the synergy of Peace Corps volunteers, Western NIS Enterprise Fund and Technovation Ukraine this camp became a reality: 25 girls from all over Ukraine spent seven unforgettable days in Ukrainian Catholic University, one of the best universities of Ukraine where they were informally learning STEM and IT-entrepreneurship by the curriculum of the Technovation Challenge. We hope that these 25 girls will be generators of ideas and changes in their communities, and get motivated to learn STEM. We also hope that the girls will make teams and will participate in the Technovation Challenge 2018”, said Nadiia Babynska (Virna), Technovation Ukraine Co-coordinator.

The Technovation project aims to popularize programming among women, support girls in the IT sector and develop women’s leadership. This year in May Western NIS Enterprise Fund supported the organizing of the first National Technovation Challenge – a pitching of projects, developed by schoolgirls from all over Ukraine. The winning team, which has developed a mobile app to measure air pollution in Zaporizhzhia called the Air Near will attend the World Pitch Summit in San Francisco, USA, on August 7-11, 2017.