Technovation Challenge is an annual global technology entrepreneurship competition (currently held in 64 countries) for girls aged 10-18, helping them learn how to enter the technology field by learning to design an app for mobile phones, draw up a business plan and bring the product to market. “Women are the main consumers of technology,” runs the mission statement. “But they don’t participate in its creation.” It was piloted in California in 2010 and Brazilian entrants first made the final in 2013.

Through stimulating but real challenges, Technovation hopes to break stereotypes and demonstrate that programming can be “a powerful tool for solving everyday problems as well as the most complex global problems.” Lessons are provided online, free of charge, and the mentoring course lasts for 12 weeks; the apps must tackle a real problem that affects the applicant’s community. The best projects are selected and entered into the global competition with the chance to win a prize of US$10,000.

Technovation Challenge Brasil was mapped in an AtlasChart by Camila Achutti, the tech FutureHero and software engineer behind Mulheres na Computação (Women in Computing).  

Chris has been writing on travel, tech, sex, food, art and books for nearly two decades. He co-founded street paper Hecho en Buenos Aires, writes regularly for the Guardian and Telegraph newspapers, and is now writing a thriller set in Andalusia.