Schoolgirls of the Village of Carbi Capture the Silicon Valley

The schoolgirls of the Carbi village secondary school after Vahan Tekeyan would not even have dreamed of themselves emerging in the Silicon Valley and receiving a prize from the hands of Google’s General Manager, however, what seemed improbable became a reality for the girls.  The One Step Forward group of girls from a small Armenian village found themselves in the Silicon Valley thanks to their original idea: a self-study mobile app for the language of gestures. 

Svetlana Davtyan, Sona Avetissyan, Vardanush Nazaretyan, Violetta Mkrtchyan and Aghavni Hakobyan under the supervision of their teacher-mentor Vardanush Hovhanessyan had created the mobile app for Armenian and English gesture languages, which became a winner in the world’s largest technological competition Technovation Challenge in August of last year. Participating in the competition were about three thousand teams of ten to eighteen-year-old girls from 105 countries of the world. This was the first year when Armenia took part in the competition. 

“The victory was really unexpected; hugs, a little bit of tears from joy and a wonderful feeling, which was special and came about upon hearing this news,” says Violetta Mkrtchyan. In her words, it was a double joy because you realized that the victory was not only yours, but it also promoted the integration of persons with hearing impairment.

“This idea was born accidentally, when a cousin of one of our friends visited our school. Naturally, when we saw a new person, we tried to get acquainted, talk with her. However, it became clear that the girl had hearing problems. So, an idea was born: to create an app, which will help people to learn the language of gestures and will unite hearing and not hearing people,” tell the girls.   

Prior to departing for San Francisco, not less interesting 43 projects were presented within the framework of the competition Technovation Challenge Armenia-2017.  The initiative belonged to the NGO Women and Information Society, whose leader Narine Abazyan is the Regional Ambassador for Technovation Challenge Project. In her words, the field of information technologies is primarily masculine and this fact is confirmed by years of her work experience.

“Today, our senior students show quite a good progress in mathematics and physics, but later, when they come to face career selection, they usually, guided by advice and stereotypes of their parents and relatives, almost never select IT. This is due to the lack of information, and besides, our society seems not to see those ideals of women which can set an example for the rising generation. Our organization is trying to bridge that gap and overcome the stereotypes, promoting the engagement of women and girls in Armenia’s information society and revealing new names in this area.”  

Representatives of the organization are convinced that the victory of the Carbi village girls is not going to be the only one, since their example will encourage schoolgirls of Armenia’s other schools. This is attested by the launch of a new competition – Technovation Challenge Armenia-2018 – at the beginning of this year.