Coding and More, in collaboration with Teens in AI, France, hosted the first global AI hackathon for teenagers in India – Girls in AI India 2021 to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th 2021. 

65 children participated in 10 teams and worked on AI solutions to help tackle one of the 5 UN Sustainable Development Goals – Zero Hunger, Good Health & Wellbeing, Quality Education, Gender Equality and Climate Action.

Since AI education for the K-12  is still in its nascency, the hackathon was structured as a combination of learning new skills through talks and workshops and implementing the same under the guidance of mentors from industry and academia.

14 international speakers from Code.org, IBM, MIT Media Labs, AIClub.world and various others held live workshops to educate the children on different AI platforms and concepts. 

We had 14 amazing mentors with expertise across business, technical, design-thinking and AI ethics guiding the teens during their build process. They joined us live from Canada, European Union, India and USA during the 5 days of the hackathon.  

Our 4 esteemed judges were.

The teams not only learned key AI and coding concepts but also teamwork and collaboration, effective communication and pitching and business development. All teams came up with innovative solutions to help achieve a sustainable goal like a smart robot with computer vision that could detect deforested land and plant trees and care for them; a reward based recycling system to encourage people to recycle their waste more efficiently; an AI system that helps you find the closest donation centre to donate excess food and reduce food wastage.