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Technovation Girls 2021 submissions are in! We’re digging in to learn about the problems girls around the world chose to solve with technology this year and gearing up for a very exciting celebration of those creative solutions in August. We also wanted to take a minute to tell all of this years’ participants how proud we are of you.

2021 has not been an easy year. We are deeply moved by the stories we have heard of girls, mentors, ambassadors, and families stepping in to help each other and support their communities. We’ve heard about your marathon video calls, your creative solutions for sharing resources, your text chats, your emails, your screenshots, and your late night work sessions. We are so impressed with you and everything you’ve done to keep in touch and keep making progress.

We’re also impressed by how you have held space for each other and found ways to connect and comfort one another, even though digital spaces can feel insufficient for those moments. Every year, we are astonished to hear of the ways this community shows up for its members, and we’re blown away by your visions for the future. 2021 was challenging—but you all make us hopeful for next year and beyond.

Technovation Girls 2020-2021 Season Impact

A dark blue world map with yellow markers in 60+ countries indicating places where teams submitted to Technovation Girls

This season, exactly 1,700 teams submitted app-based solutions to community problems. Those 1,700 teams represent nearly 5,900 girls from over 60 countries. Teams addressed issues ranging from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to climate change.

Several countries showed enormous increases in submissions this year compared to last. In particular, Armenia tripled submissions from 2020, and Japan had 9 times as many submissions this year. To all the Chapter Ambassadors, Mentors, volunteers and students who poured so much time and energy into the program this year—you’re amazing!

We also want to note that over 90% of the teams who successfully submitted this season worked with a mentor. Thank you to every single person who mentors teams and provides support, encouragement, and feedback to young people ready to change the world. It is very clear that we could not do this without you.

As for the apps themselves, the overwhelming majority of teams use App Inventor or Thunkable to build their apps, but this year over 10% of teams used Java, Android Studio, Swift, or XCode to develop their apps, which is exciting to see. Of the 1,700 apps submitted, about 18% of teams built apps that use artificial intelligence, and another 18% of teams chose to address climate change in their submissions. Just over 10% of submissions are mobile games.

As we continue to review submissions, we will share more detailed breakdowns about the kinds of problems teams chose to solve, and how they align to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals—so stay tuned! We’ll be announcing semifinalists on June 2.

The final 2021 assignment: Celebrate!

Like a lot of the people who participate in Technovation Girls, we care about data and looking at numbers and the stories they can tell us, but we also care about the people those numbers represent—you!

To everyone who participated this year: we are so proud of you. We’re grateful that you choose to be part of the Technovation community, and that you share your ideas for a better, safer, cleaner world with all of us.

We mean it with our whole heart when we say this: if you completed lessons, if you made it through online work sessions, if you connected with your mentor and teammates via phone, text, whatsapp, or in-person…whatever you managed to do this year—you have so much to be proud of. In the middle of a global pandemic, you showed up to keep fighting for a better world for everyone. In choosing a problem to solve and acting to solve it, you’re already a bigger winner than any competition could ever make you. You amaze us—and we know you’ll amaze the world in the months and years to come.

As mentor Iseult in Ireland reminded us earlier this year, “‘winning a prize isn’t important. What you win is you win the confidence you get in yourself, you win the fact that you get to say ‘I made an app, I made a business plan’.”

We hope that you’ve taken time to celebrate everything you’ve accomplished since you signed up for the program—and we hope you’ll join us on August 12 and 13, 2021 for the Technovation World Summit, so we can celebrate together. Learn more about World Summit (registration will open soon), and stay in touch with us on twitter, instagram, and facebook.

If you’re curious to understand the problems girls care about, and how they choose to solve them, explore the work of teams who shared their submissions on social media:

India

Brazil

 

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Spain

 

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