NGO working towards empowering women through education is organizing a unique hackathon called “Hack4Her” in association with TechGig and RHoK India to resolve some key issues in the space of women’s education in India. This is a first-ever hackathon conceptualized by an NGO in India.  The event was held in The Hub, Bangalore on 4th and 5th of November’17.

The key objective is to tackle issues and innovate, to solve some of the issues focusing on Education faced by girls and women in our society. At Hack4Her, WEP-India’s goal is to encourage change and solution driven mindset. The Hackathon is designed to roll out in two phases, where the 1st phase was conducted online out of which best teams will be shortlisted for the main event which will conclude with phase 2 offline finale. The online hackathon which just recently concluded with a record-breaking number of 2000 plus registration on their platform. The 2 – day Hackathon was conducted among the finalists who have been shortlisted from the online submissions on 4th and 5th of November’17.The winners for the Hack4Her Hackathon event conducted on November 4 and November 5, 2017, are Anthony Cote – Game Designer and Media Hacker from France &
Aprurva Raj – Entrepreneur from Gujarat, India.

Technologists, designers, and innovators with great social insights have come aboard for this hackathon together to build technology-based solutions. The hackathon will bring in both tangible and intangible value in the complex and diverse ecosystem in India. Speaking about the idea of the hackathon and its impact on women’s education, Shruthi Dinkar, Director – WEP India said, “Women’s Education Project India conceptualized the idea of Hack4Her in the context of some real challenges faced by a woman to pursue her education in India. Here, we are talking about women in rural parts of the country who drop out due to various socio-economic reasons. By addressing some of the resolvable challenges, through this hackathon, we are taking baby steps to ensure our women in the coming generations don’t drop out of schools and colleges for reasons that could have been just a hack away. This hackathon is one step closer to making a woman self-reliant and independently empowered through education.” The winning team will be entitled to an acceleration program facilitated by Rhok India and the prize will be awarded a by WEP India.

Solutions for the following issues will be explored during this hackathon

  • Female literacy in India stands at just 65.46% (2011 census) when the world average is 79.7%. Furthermore, the school dropout rate amongst adolescent Indian girls is 63.5%, which means that most girls going to school right now will gradually fallout from the education fold and may get into employment or family life even when their education stands at bay. Through technology, we want to provide girls access to online educational materials including a need-based helpline, with information on their rights.
  • Build capacities of select girls to act as tutors in Kishori sanghas. Link sanghas to each other through technology to create peer support.  Tutors across sanghas can provide academic assistance to each other.
  • How we do we tilt that desire to be a part of education institutions which promote education towards women? Institutional infrastructure – where the best go to rest, leftovers come to women-specific institutions. A Co-ed school most likely gets better infrastructure, teachers and it is multi-fold. One way is an attitudinal shift to make the change and we want to use technology to aid the change in mindset to provide better institutional infrastructure. We are looking for tangible platforms which could nurture the skills of girls as well as speak of their capabilities
  • Women’s Education Project is a looking to make the ‘I am Leader’ program online. While the obvious solution is put together LMS, what we are focused to arrive at is a platform where students have a progression to each theme of the program namely – Health, Finance, Civics, Environmental Science etc. from the time they join the program. And, to build a platform where users can log in from any part of the world and learn. Technology will aid in qualifying this to make it more interesting
  • Getting better involvement of the alumnae in the form of mentoring, sharing of employment opportunities and networking

Chinmayi – RHoK India said, “We believe access to education is a very important part of the empowerment of women. Access to education for women in India has complex dependencies deeply embedded in the social fabric. We believe that innovative methodologies like a hackathon can present some tangible solutions to these issues. Hence, we are partnering on this event to see how it is possible to build interventions through technology. We think any effort to make this possible is worth all the support and RHoK India is a very proud partner of the event.”

Speaking of this association with WEP-India, Dipti Tandon, Product Head, TechGig said, “We are excited to partner with Women’s Education Project and Random Hacks of Kindness, India for Hack4Her. At TechGig, we strongly believe in making women the forefront of all endeavors. We have the Geek Goddess series where we celebrate the feats of women coders exclusively. We are hopeful that Hack4Her will give light to many ideas that will boost tech solutions to enhance women education.”

So we must need to conduct many such Hackathon specially dedicated for Women’s so with this event we will empower Women to learn more and even encourage them to participate in such events.We basically see any hackathons which are specifically for men’s and very rarely I can find any women participating in the competition so this is a good move and all other IT companies must conduct such event specifically for women’s.

Women’s Education Project

Women’s Education Project (WEP), founded in 2002 is not-for-profit organization in India which believes in empowering women through education and thereby lifting millions of girls out of poverty. The centers provide resources for young women from families living on less than $1.50 a day to graduate from college and begin a career. Within this supportive community, WEP students receive funds for college tuition, books and transportation, study in the library and computer lab and attend the ‘I am a Leader’ program. As alumni, (many successfully placed in jobs), they have enlarged their vision of life’s possibilities and equally important, gained confidence and, perhaps for the first time, discovered a sense of self. 
Beyond Borders is an innovative initiative of Women’s Education Project – India (WEP-India) will host a Forum, to foster partnering and exchange of strategies, programs, and resources among NGOs, social enterprises, CSRs, foundations and individuals committed to advancing the lives of girls and women living in poverty in India.
Techgig

Techgig.com is a culmination of everything related to technology, a platform exclusively for IT professionals to synergize, share, exchange ideas, facts and information as well as showcase their work and express their views on the vast repertoire that the IT industry encompasses. Garnering cutting edge views, reviews and news, jobs as well as providing a podium for connecting with your colleagues, peers are the mainstay of Techgig.com. A global community where more than 2.5 million techies from across the globe come together and compete. Guinness world Record 2017 holder and Certified National Record holder – Limca book of records 2015-2016 for organizing the largest online programming contest.
Random Hacks of Kindness India

Random Hacks of Kindness is the largest and longest running social hackathon in the world. We connect technologists who want to make a difference with organizations that have social impact to create open source solutions to societal challenges. The global community is now under Geeks Without Bounds. It has an active presence is 4 continents –  Africa, Asia, Australia and North America. RHoK India has conducted many hackathons across the country. Our successful hackathon stories include, early earthquakes prediction, easy crop health detection, Interventions for gender based violence etc. Until now the Indian community was supported by funding from organizations such as NASSCOM 10,000 startups, US Consulate Kolkata, Twitter, HP and Yahoo. We also had some other institutions and partners.

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