Intel India and NASSCOM Foundation announced the successful culmination of the 'Girls Innovate For Tomorrow or GIFT' program for the Delhi-NCR region. The program encouraged and motivated girl students from underserved communities to become solution providers, and get engaged in self-learning which eventually led to discoveries, innovations and generating further interest in technology as a career choice.
The program engaged with 742 girls from 12 schools and non-profits through five separate hackathons. Out of these, 81 girls with 15 innovative solutions to basic community problems were finally selected for mentoring sessions.
These 81 young innovators showcased their solutions built on Arduino, Node MCU etc. at the NASSCOM Foundation headquarters in Noida where they were judged by some of the leading minds from the Technology Industry. They also got to share the same space as some of the best startups housed in the NASSCOM Start-up incubation centre.
Some of the innovations at showcase were: Monitoring and Control of household water utilization, Driver drowsiness detection, Weather monitoring and alarm system, Elder/Disabled home monitoring system, Automated river cleaning system, Gas cylinder management, monitoring and automated refill ordering, Farming automation: Ploughing and seeding, Personal Women safety alarm system.
Winners:
Speaking at the occasion Shweta Khurana, Director, Corporate Affairs, Intel India said "Girls Innovate for Tomorrow is a special initiative to encourage girls to ideate, explore, create and tinker to solve the challenges they see around their communities. We believe that programs as these are essential to eliminate the biases that deter young women to make better informed decisions about their interest in technology-related studies and engineering. Intel India aims to catalyze change for girls who are often excluded from accessing opportunities and closing the technology gender and social equity gaps. We would like to thank NASSCOM Foundation for implementing this program and inspiring girls to innovate for a better world"
NASSCOM Foundation was the main driver for the initiative and worked with the ecosystem NGOs and implementation partner to successfully execute the program.
Ashok Pamidi, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation, said. "We believe that programs like Girls Innovate For Tomorrow are the key to creation of gender parity across the society. Today, our engineering colleges across India have less than 30% female student representation. It is important to get these girls excited about technology at their foundation age and give them ample opportunities to select technology as a career option. This inturn will also help fill the gender gap in the Technology Industry. I congratulate all the girls who have been able to showcase their innovation potential at the highest level today and hope that we get some amazing future women entrepreneurs from this group. I would also like to thank Intel for their faith in this program and would like to call upon other companies to help take similar initiatives forward."
Post this, the girls will also get a month long training and mentorship on the basics of Internet of Things.
The GIFT program is also being conducted in the regions of Pune and Bangalore enaging with 1200 girls from the region and will be culminate in more such innovative solutions to showcase later in the year.
