Technovation Girls
Theme: Promoting skills and development
Phase and Stage: STEM – Primary education
Action: Training / mentoring
Beneficiaries: Schools; Girls only; Adults
Users: Education providers; NGOs/Society
Technovation Girls is an international technology and entrepreneurship program for girls, challenging teams to develop tech-based solutions to real problems in their communities. EDruptiva is the licensed entity responsible for implementing this program in Portugal, aiming to increase girls’ participation and confidence in STEM and digital fields through a structured mentorship model and corporate partnerships.
THE CHALLENGE
Portugal faces a significant underrepresentation of girls in STEM fields, both in education and later in digital careers. EDruptiva identified an opportunity to address this gap directly, using its expertise in technology education to give girls structured, hands-on exposure to STEM through mentorship and real-world problem-solving. Rather than building a new solution from scratch, EDruptiva chose to license and adapt Technovation Girls — an established international program — to create a nationally-aligned implementation model, ensuring both credibility and connection to a global community of practice.
OUR SOLUTION
EDruptiva adapted the Technovation Girls methodology for the Portuguese context as a complete annual program structured in four phases. In the Launch phase, hundreds of students, mentors, and institutional/corporate partners are engaged annually. The Training phase consists of a 12-week educational program covering technology, AI, and entrepreneurship, delivered in person or online. In the Creation phase, all-girls teams — mirroring a professional team structure, with mentors working alongside students — develop a tech-based solution to a real social problem, going through problem identification, ideation, prototyping, and solution-building. The program culminates in the Show phase, where teams present their projects through a video pitch to a selected jury at events held across the country. While open to girls aged 8 to 18, the program places particular focus on the 3rd cycle (lower secondary), a critical age for academic path decisions. Beyond coding, the program builds entrepreneurship, leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills, aiming to demystify the structural roots of gender inequality in STEM.
OUTCOME
“Since its launch, Technovation Girls Portugal has directly supported over 2,000 girls, resulting in more than 300 tech solutions developed to address real community problems, and over 1,700 participants at public events (2022-2025).
In the 2025/2026 season alone, the program supported 560 girls across Portugal, coordinated by a national team of 10 staff members structured across regional roles (north, center, south), partnerships, school engagement, and communications. 17% of participants came from low-income or underserved backgrounds. The program worked with over 15 corporate partners, including BNP Paribas, Santander, Capgemini, and NTT Data, engaging them through mentoring, funding, events, and in-kind support.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
“A key lesson has been the importance of early intervention: to achieve structural change in girls’ relationship with STEM, the focus needs to start early — ideally reaching girls up to age 14, before career-defining decisions about study paths are made. This is why the program, while open to ages 8-18, places particular emphasis on the 3rd cycle of basic education, a critical window for shaping future choices.
Grounding the program in real problem-solving (aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals) and structuring teams to mirror real professional dynamics — with mentors and students working together, and direct connections to companies — proved key to making the experience meaningful and not just technical. Framing the program as more than coding (also building entrepreneurship, leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills) helped demystify the structural roots of gender inequality in STEM, rather than only addressing its symptoms.
A key lesson has been the value of a distributed regional structure: appointing dedicated ambassadors for different areas of the country (north, center, south) allowed the program to balance national coordination with local responsiveness, which proved essential for scaling beyond the capital.
Diversifying the type of corporate partnerships — beyond funding alone, to include mentoring, judging, events, field trips, and in-kind support — increased the program’s resilience and made it easier to attract and retain partners. However, some corporate partners with stricter cybersecurity policies were unable to receive official program communications, a replicable challenge worth anticipating when engaging larger companies.
Piloting the program’s inclusion in public schools (rather than relying solely on private or extracurricular settings) showed early promise as a path to reach more girls, particularly from underserved backgrounds, and is a model worth testing in other national contexts.
Finally, the program introduced a dedicated AI tutor to support participants, built with a strong focus on controlled and ethically responsible use of AI — an approach we consider replicable and increasingly necessary as AI tools become more embedded in educational programs for young people.”
