As the pandemic continues to affect our lives more than a year after its discovery, finding activities to maintain and improve our personal and collective well-being has never been more important. Our Girls Go Tech (GGT) participants have developed exciting new ways to use technology to do just that.

On Saturday, we held our virtual Award Presentation for the GGT STEM Competition 2020, co-organised by Goldman Sachs, as part of our signature GGT Programme. Under the theme ‘STEM for Social Good – Let’s Support our Community’, the STEM Competition challenged over 100 GGT participants aged 14-17 to work in teams to build an app or a product prototype that would help improve the well-being and support resilience of the Hong Kong community during COVID-19.

Participants joined a series of virtual workshops then developed a unique mobile app or product prototype, with support from corporate volunteers. The innovation and passion of the girls was immense with a broad variety of products developed. Some of the winning projects included an app that helps us recognise emotions through our face masks with an engaging incentive game, an app encouraging fun physical activity and also VR counselling game, to better understand the symptoms of mental health issues. The Grand Award went to the team from Kit Sam Lam Bing Yim Secondary School who developed a ‘smart’ dispensary to support older people with timed reminders to take their medication and messages from loved ones.

We were humbled to have such a passionate, creative and generous network of schools, sponsors, trainers, speakers, judges, organising committee members and friends to support this Competition and we are confident that with continued focus and collaboration like this, the future of STEM can be gender equal.

The event also served as the GGT Closing Ceremony 2020, celebrating the achievements of the Programme over the course of last year. It also featured an engaging panel discussion with four speakers from different generations of girls and young women interested in STEM, who explored the topic “How Has Technology Helped with our Well-being During the Pandemic?” The discussion addressed some of the challenges they observed over the past year and how they see technology alleviating some of these difficulties. For more details on the event and all who made this possible, read our press release (Chinese or English).

These girls are the engineers, scientists and technologists of the future. We must work to close the gender gap in STEM as every girl deserves the opportunity to fully participate in the jobs of the future.

Join us to make this effort a reality.

Get in touch at Fiona.Nott@twfhk.org.