Five young Afghan students shine at Bilbao's Impact Week
Coverage of the Youth Hackathon winners at Impact Week; this article first appeared in Deia in Spanish, republished below in English translation.
Behind Smile Up there are five smiles ready to light up the faces of needy children living in Africa, but also a shared idea conceived in one of the countries in the world that raises the highest barriers for women, Afghanistan. A team made up of five young women from that country won yesterday's Impact Week Bilbao social entrepreneurship competition with a simple initiative at first glance: using one of the social networks most in demand by young people, Tik Tok, to visualise the needs of children and facilitate donations. “I'm still nervous and excited. I come from Afghanistan, where there are many restrictions,” one of the winners of the competition explained to DEIA. They took the opportunity to claim their rights and explained that “we can be here, but there are many women there with a lot of potential who don't have the opportunity. So in addition to the prize, we are happy to be able to represent those girls in some way.”
Another member of the team explained that “we have only been here in Bilbao for a week and we have worked very hard” . She also said that “although we knew we had a good proposal, winning the prize was unexpected”. The Bilbao youth hackathon was one of the activities of Impact Week, where young students from Mondragon University presented their entrepreneurial ideas to make Bilbao a city with social impact.
The event began on Thursday, at the Bilbao Berrikuntza Faktoria building, with a preliminary phase. Each team had exactly five minutes to convince the jury. Of the eleven teams that participated, six qualified for yesterday's grand final, held at the Euskalduna. The dynamics and operation were the same as in the previous round.
The jury was in charge of voting to select the first two winners. The other winning entrepreneurial proposal was hand2hand, a project with the aim of achieving smart mobility. The third and final prize was selected by the public who attended the event, through a QR code that was displayed on the screen. Cuideco's proposal was the winner of this third prize .
The three winning teams out of the six that participated in the final took home three prizes: 1,200 euros for each team, a ticket to the next edition of Impact Week and the chance to enter Social Factory , a university incubator funded with European funds where fifty cooperatives will be formed in the coming years. The international presence of the participants was notable, especially that of the winning team.
As Sain Milena López, from Mondragon Unibertsitatea, explained, “they are very ambitious girls who are living in an irregular situation, since they cannot return home due to the arrival of the Taliban.” As for the competition, the main themes that were focused on in the hackathon were youth entrepreneurship, gender equality and social inclusion, green transition (everything related to the environment) and technology for the common good.
Sain Milena López stressed that “one of the objectives is for our students to create social enterprises.” She also added that it is a different way of creating companies where “capital is not the priority, but people.”
After the event, all participants posed together for a short photo session. It was then revealed that Sweden will be the host city for the next Impact Week.