Above: Ocean Girlz, top left, T’Sharae Alleyne, top right, Shadae Stanley and bottom right, Rebekkah Murray.

After months of challenging over 700 girls around the region to develop tech solutions to pressing regional issues, the Caribbean Girls Hack TechnoCreativity Hackathon 2021, came to a nail biting close with its final Caribbean Girls Virtual 3D Hackathon finals on Saturday, May 8th.

One hundred and fifty girls, representing 36 teams, from 10 Caribbean countries participated in the finals, pitching their techno creative solutions under three themes: Climate Change, Save Our Oceans and Gender-Based Violence (GBV), using the modalities of Animation, Short Film, Music Video, Photo Story Board, and Vlog to bring their creative concepts to life.

The event culminated in the highly anticipated announcement of the Hackathon 2021 winners. The teams from Suriname, the Girl Code and Fusion Girls, copped both the first and second place spots, with their Animation stories on Climate Change and Save Our Oceans respectively (resp). Ocean Girls from Trinidad & Tobago, and Digital Dream Team from Barbados tied for third place, with their Animated Storyboard and Animation solutions on Save Our Oceans and Climate Change (resp).

Fourth place went to Sangre Grande Development Trinidad and Tobago for their Music Video on Save Our Oceans. The People’s choice award, based on participant voting during the 3D event, went to Free Tech from Trinidad and Tobago for their Animation on Save Our Oceans.

Adjudication Co-ordinator, Yeana Kelly Simmons of Art By Creative Design (ABCD) was effusive in her praise for the girls. “The high standard of innovation and creativity in problem-solving was nothing short of inspiring!”

All team members in the top five teams, received state-of-the-art laptops from the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI). In addition, the first place winners received LTE enabled tablets, from Regional Telecommunications partner FLOW and sister company BTC, and National Commercial Bank Foundation awarded the team, a grant of J$150,000.00. The second place winners also received LG smart phones from Digicel & LOOP.

UN Women will award a paid summer internship to two lucky members of the top 5 winning teams. The winners of the People’s Choice Award received a cash prize of J$100,000.00 from the National Commercial Bank Jamaica.

The Caribbean Girls Hackathon is an annual program, run by SheLeadsIT co- founders Bridget Lewis and Nicole Pitter-Patterson, in collaboration with Technology partner, Restore a Sense of I Can (RSC) Tech Clubs, and is a part of the annual International Girls in ICT Day celebration.

This year, the program was forced to go completely virtual in response to the COVID 19 pandemic. There were unforeseen ‘silver linings,’ however, as they were able to triple the number of participating countries over prior years and provide an opportunity for the girls to form lasting Caribbean-wide friendships and expand their networks.

The event is supported by an impressive line-up of Caribbean and International supporters; Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, Inter-American Development Bank, FLOW & BTC, UN Women, Digicel & LOOP, National Commercial Bank Jamaica Ltd., and Fujitsu, to name a few.

You can still experience the Caribbean Girls Virtual 3D Hackathon event, for one more week, and see the exciting activities that were available, by downloading the CGH3DVirtualTech21 App on the CGH website and follow us on Instagram.

Sangre Grande Development Team: Aaliyah Ferreira, Naomi Lewis, Brianna Baillie, Destiny Rattan and Chelsie Baillie.