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Good practice Imported

Caribbean Girls Hack — Regional AI, Coding and Digital-Skills Hackathon Network

Grenada · St. George's · See the Grenada profile · See the St. George's profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 17% 67/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A WEI Forward-led hackathon network has trained over a thousand Caribbean girls aged 13–21 in coding, AI, animation and pitching across Jamaica, Grenada, Trinidad & Tobago and St Vincent & the Grenadines, tied to ITU's Girls in ICT Day.

~1,200
Girls participating in CGH hackathons since 2017 (ITU figure)
2,000+
Cumulative participants across all programme activities (WEI Forward figure)
Caribbean Girls Hack — Regional AI, Coding and Digital-Skills Hackathon Network

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
WEI Forward (Women's Economic Imperative), with ITU International Girls in ICT Day and CARICOM partners
Period
2017–2020, recurring within CARICOM Girls in ICT programming
Keywords
nonprofit, hackathon, digital skills, AI literacy, gender equality

Context

Caribbean Girls Hack (CGH) is a regional hackathon and digital-skills programme created in 2017 by WEI Forward (Women's Economic Imperative) to close the ICT and AI gender gap among girls aged 13 to 21 across Caribbean Small Island Developing States, tied to ITU's annual International Girls in ICT Day.

Objectives

Close the ICT and AI gender gap for girls in the Caribbean by giving them hands-on exposure to coding, AI and digital-content skills, and a platform to pitch solutions to regional problems.

Activities

High-school, college and university teams from Jamaica, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, and St Vincent and the Grenadines have competed in national legs. Training content includes an introduction to artificial intelligence alongside coding, animation, video production, mobile app development, social-media campaign design and IBM-supported technology sessions, with teams pitching solutions to problems framed around the SDGs, gender-based violence and climate resilience.

Results

ITU reporting records roughly 1,200 girls participating in CGH hackathons since the 2017 launch, while WEI Forward's own account of the programme's expansion into online tech-skills training, expos and webinars puts cumulative reach at over 2,000 participants. Grenada's St Joseph's Convent, St George's team won the country's 2019 national edition.

Conclusions

Available sources report participation counts and curriculum content, not independently measured skill or employment outcomes, and exact figures vary between the ITU (~1,200) and WEI Forward (2,000+) accounts, likely reflecting different reporting windows. CARICOM's Girls in ICT Partnership marked the network's 10th anniversary in April 2026, indicating the programme's activities continue within the region's ongoing Girls in ICT programming.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
Volunteer tech experts and corporate partners (e.g. IBM) delivering training sessions, National hackathon legs organised locally in each participating country

Conditions for success

  • Regional partner network (WEI Forward, ITU, CARICOM) to coordinate across islands
  • Corporate sponsor involvement for technical training content
  • Alignment with an existing international observance (ITU Girls in ICT Day) for visibility and recurring cadence

Commonly funded by

CERV — Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Erasmus+ Philanthropic / foundation funding

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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