The organizers of the contest are Tashkent city administration, Tashkent city Women’s Committee, Kamolot Civic Youth Movement, the UN project on promoting electronic government, Inha University in Tashkent, Center UZINFOCOM.

It is worth to mention that the contest Technovation has been organized in 78 countries of the world since 2010.

The programme is fully free and supported by Google, Yahoo, Adobe, Intel, Oracle, Dropbox. Since 2015, the UN and UN Women are participating in organization of the contest.

The programme envisages creation of girl teams, who under guidance of the mentors and trainers should solve one problem, create app to solve this problem and create a start-up to launch the app in the market.

Participation in the programme helps girls to develop critical thinking, entrepreneurship and programming skills, as well as the ability to identify problems, develop and test solutions, work in teams and communicate with different audiences.

This year, 21 teams of girls participate in Technovation Uzbekistan. Bright Minds represented Inha University in Tashkent. About 25 students of IUT mentored the programme participants.

Programme participants presented their projects within the Startup Mix at IUT. They presented mobile apps, prepared within 12 weeks, which were based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The presentations were aimed at demonstrating works of the teams, receiving comments and recommendation of the experts.

At the final event, the sponsors of Technovation Uzbekistan marked 8 teams on special nominations.

BRAVEHEARTS receives an award for the most realistic business project from Asaka Bank. BRAVEHEARTS presented app WisePower, which helps to search employees among people, who already retired for pension.

ECOLIFE was awarded by the Embassy of Israel in Tashkent for the best innovative project. The team developed a project EClean, which is directed at solving problems of waste processing in the city.

The US Embassy in Tashkent marked the project of UNIQUE UNION in the nomination of the best social project. The project of UNIQUE UNION, JoinME, helps people to find companion for renting habitation.

The award in special nomination of the UNDP on open data, went to HealthTech app of Bright Minds. The team used Open Data to help people to solve problems of queues in clinics and the loss of pharmacy recipes.

Kamolot handed over the award for the best youth project to BLAH BLAH TEAM for their Globedoo app, which is oriented to finding foreign stipend programmes.

TECHNO SQUAD with their Yordam app received the award in the nomination of the best app for women and children from Datasite. The app helps to track location of children at the age from 5 to 15 to ensure their security.

Youth Initiative Center awarded LIMITBUSTERS for their apps for students Linkey, which helps young people to find tutors, as well as people for joint study and sport activities.

Special of the nomination from the UN Country Office in Uzbekistan went to THE WORLD SAVERS for their Drop Stop app, which helps rationally use water resources.

Besides, all participants and mentors of Technovation Uzbekistan received a special prize from the US Embassy. All them received one year subscription to MIT Technology Review.

Cisco provided opportunity to eight students of Inha University in Tashkent, who mentored programme participants, to undergo CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) training.

The final event did not select the winners, who will travel to San Francisco as international jury of the contest will select the best team. The event was organized to show achievements of the girls during the short time.

In next step, international jury will select the best projects worldwide and their will participate in the final stage of the contest in San Francisco (California, USA).

Rector of Inha University in Tashkent Sarvar Babahodjaev said: “We are happy that Technovation Uzbekistan programme was organized in our country. Employees and students of Inha University in Tashkent made contribution to realization of the programme, which is directed at attracting girls to IT-industry. Taking part in such events, our students receive valuable experience on developing and managing projects, as well as teamwork.”