This year the European Youth Award (EYA) Festival under the theme „Watch out: Europe on fire“ took place at FH Joanneum. On November 28th we had the possibility to attend the conference of this years winners, where ten groups of students/startups pitched their projects.
All of the projects were really interesting and well presented but imagiLabs I liked best. It is a project by three young Swedish women, that want to get teenage girls into coding and tech in general. Since the Technology/IT industry is still male-dominated they want to encourage girls between 12-16 to start programming and rise the percentage of women in STEM industries (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) in the future. Technology is the future, so it is important to give young girls the opportunity the be (a bigger) part of the industry. Therefore, they developed a mobile application, that introduces coding in a fun and playful way. Despite technical difficulties at the beginning, Dora gave a good insight into their idea.
I really liked the EYA and all the projects were impressive and inspirational, but currently I cannot see myself applying for next year’s EYA. Mainly because I’m not working on any bigger project right now.
