Startup Europe Awards

Finnova’s Women4Tech celebrates the International Day of Women and Girls in Science with an event to get girls into STEAM careers

– A hybrid day will be held on Friday 11 February 2022 from 9.15 a.m. to 1.45 p.m. (CET) to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

– The aim of the event is to introduce young women to STEAM professions from a social perspective and applicability.

– Companies and institutions will give talks and workshops for pupils from various secondary schools.

 

Brussels, 10.02.2022

On next Friday 11 February 2022 from 9.15 to 13.45 (CET) a live digital conference will be held on the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, organised by Technovation Girls CV, Women4Tech of the Finnova Foundation, the Founders Association, the Valencian Engineering Board with its project “Yo, Ingeniera” and with the sponsorship of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Economic Innovation of the City Council of Valencia. Under the umbrella of the Womanation movement, the aim is to empower girls to decide to study fields such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

This initiative, which you can sign up here, will take place in the framework of the European Year of Youth. Its purpose is to bring young girls closer to STEAM professions from a social perspective and applicability in order to transmit to both girls and adults that talent, science and technology have no gender.

The event will be attended by Diana Morant, Minister of Science and Innovation; Pilar Bernabé, Deputy Mayor for Innovative Development of Economic Sectors and Employment at Valencia City Council; María José Valero, CEO of Talent Growth Management and Ambassador of Technovation Girls Comunidad Valenciana; Angélica Gómez, President of the Valencian Engineering Board; Julia Rodríguez, Communication Officer at the Finnova Foundation and Lola Bordás, representing Interreg CILIFO.

Activities of the event

In this event, presentations and workshops will be held in simultaneous digital rooms aimed at students from various educational centres divided by age and type of activities. In each room, institutions and companies such as Schneider Electric, American Space Valencia, EDICOM, Generación Espontánea from the UPV, ESERO and Google will present their activities and proposals. In this sense, each class must decide which room to join to participate live in the action.

To end up the day, a conference room will be held on high school students, university students and teachers in which they will showcase successful stories and presentations. At this conference, companies and schools will present the actions they are developing to promote the inclusion of women in STEAM, in which they participate.

To participate in this event, you can register here if you are a school and if you are part of a company, a high school student or a teacher you can register here.

Presentation of the Finnova challenges

The Finnova Foundation is participating in this event through the Finnova Challenges, in which real projects on circular economy, renewable energy generation, digitisation of agriculture, biodiversity protection or sustainable tourism will be presented. Finnova participates as a partner in order to make them known and attract new members. The deadline for submitting these projects is 5 June, coinciding with the celebration of EU Green Week.

  • CirCoAx project of CircularInnoBooster

CircularInnoBooster Fashion and Textile and its accelerator CirCoAx is a project funded by the Programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (COSME) of the European Union that aims to replace the linear model of the conventional fashion and textile industry with circular, regenerative and sustainable enterprises. With this challenge, girls are invited to change the fashion and textile sector and reduce pollution through innovative proposals.

 

– INTERREG CILIFO and INTERREG FIREPOCTEP

Finnova collaborates in projects related to the protection of biodiversity, prevention and action against fires and regeneration of spaces in several areas of Spain and Portugal. Therefore, through these challenges they ask for innovative ideas that can be transformed into new projects.

 

– LIFE ECODIGESTION 2.0

Another challenge has to do with the European LIFE Ecodigestion 2.0 project, financed by the LIFE programme, which converts organic waste into biogas on demand, through the anaerobic digesters of water treatment plants, favouring the reuse of this waste to obtain renewable energy and reducing costs. This challenge consists of developing an application that, depending on the waste we have, shows us how much energy we would be able to generate.

 

– INTERREG NAPOCTEP 

NAPOCTEP is a cross-border project belonging to the Interreg POCTEP programme (Spain – Portugal) that aims to convert the heritage of the French invasion period into a quality and sustainable tourism product that can create wealth and employment in areas of Castilla-Leon and central Portugal threatened by depopulation and ageing. This challenge is open to ideas related to the creation of an application linked to cultural tourism that can increase tourist demand in a destination or solve a problem caused by tourism.

 

– HIBA – HUB IBERIA AGROTECH

The last of the projects to be launched to the Technovation girls is HIBA, within the framework of the Interreg V-A Spain-Portugal Programme 2014-2020 (POCTEP). This initiative seeks to improve the business capacity and sustainability of the agri-food sector through digitalisation, generating competitiveness and the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, the promotion of entrepreneurship, as well as boosting the creation of new businesses. This challenge encourages the search for ideas to enable the agricultural sector to modernise.

 

About the Finnova Foundation (www.finnova.eu)

European Foundation for the financing of innovation. It is a European foundation based in Brussels whose objectives are to promote public-private cooperation through innovation to address societal challenges such as employment, training, entrepreneurship, the UN SDGs, the circular economy, etc. Finnova organises the Startup Europe Awards, an initiative of the European Commission and the Finnova Foundation, to recognise the best European startups in the social field.

About Women4Tech (http://womenfortech.eu/)

Women4Tech is an initiative to support innovation, the creation of disruptive projects and public-private partnerships focused on women’s entrepreneurship of the Finnova Foundation.