Female Eduvos students show that women have a place in tech at annual Hackathon

Students from Eduvos’s Claremont, Midrand and Bedfordview campuses were selected to take part in this year’s Hackathon. All Eduvos’s entrants are final-year students in the information technology faculty, one of the institution’s four future-facing faculties.

The annual Hackathon takes place in August to celebrate Women’s Month. It is the brainchild of GirlCode, a non-profit organisation that aims to empower women through technology and believes that more women should be involved in tech, design and development. This year’s event theme was AI4Women, fitting as AI has rapidly advanced in the last year, and took place on 5 and 6 August in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

Events like the Hackathon are important in closing the gender gap in the tech world and encourage more young women to get involved in tech and STEM-related fields. Women are less likely to enter tech-related fields and only 22% of AI workers are women.

The event sees computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, and project managers, come together and collaborate intensively on software projects. The hackathon is not a competition but a collaborative learning experience. The event is an open format, which means that participants can hack on web, mobile, desktop, or hardware applications in teams of two to four participants.

“Being selected by Eduvos for the GirlCode Hackathon is a thrilling honour,” says final year BSc information technology in software engineering student, Ogechi Geraldine Gerald. “This event empowers women in tech and addresses the gender gap in the industry. Through my participation, I hope to inspire other women to pursue tech careers and contribute to a more inclusive future for the industry. This opportunity signifies a positive step towards breaking down societal stereotypes and promoting gender diversity in technology.”

Eduvos is proud that its students participated in this event that empowers young women and works to make tech more inclusive. Eduvos is excited about this year’s theme which speaks to inclusivity in Artificial Intelligence. The institution aims to become the leading meta university in Africa by 2027. Through a partnership with U.S based tech company, EON Reality, Eduvos is moving to incorporate AI and Virtual Reality into its academic offerings and has also recently introduced the Microsoft Azure AI Engineering program to equip students with the knowledge to work in the AI-field.

Eduvos collaborated with partner Vela Trust, a non-profit trust that strives to expand access to high-quality higher education, to select six Eduvos students, also referred to as Vossies, to participate in the Hackathon. Big sponsors, including Takealot, Amazon and Vuma, support the Hackathon with the objective of finding fresh talent. The event, therefore, offers students exposure to possible employers and an opportunity to show employers what they can do.

The six Vossies who went to this year’s Hackathon were:

Jenna Jamie Romen
Jailynn Philander
Ogechi Geraldine Gerald
Siphokazi Mbatha
Puseletso Sefike
Danielle Jae Ormedrod

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