Statistics and information courtesy conversations with Technovation representatives and their website.
Overview: Technovation finds mentors who specialize in coding, entrepreneurship, and business planning and connects them with passionate, creative and innovative high school and middle school girls. The season runs about a year with a curriculum outlined to help create, build, and sell an app that solves a community problem. Teams compete in state and national events with prizes awarded as seed money for the concept.
Vision: to close the tech gender gap.
Population Served: 10- to 18-year-old females.
Ideal mentor: Business and technical mentors. Ideally each team has one female mentor to help the girls gain confidence and see a member of the underrepresented population work in their area of expertise. More diversity in the business and technical fields is needed.
Outcomes: Technovation has an impressive impact and reach for both volunteers and students. After participating in the program, Technovation found the following trends with their students:
- 78% were more interested in Computer Science
- 70% were more interested in entrepreneurship
- 67% were more interested in business leadership
- 58% of alumni enroll in future computer science courses. 26% major in computer science.
Technovation found the following trends with their volunteers post-participation:
- 58% increased their technical skills
- 67% increased their knowledge about entrepreneurship
- 70% learned to be effective mentors