Pulse-Rescue AI — Digicel Foundation's Girls in ICT Hackathon Turns Hurricane Trauma into AI Innovation in Jamaica

After Category 5 Hurricane Melissa devastated Jamaica in October 2025, Digicel Foundation and STEM Spark Solutions ran a Girls in ICT Day-linked AI and Climate Change Hackathon series across Jamaican high schools in April-May 2026, marking International Girls in ICT Day 2026 ("AI for Development: Girls Shaping the Digital Future"). Sessions ran at Denham Town High and Tivoli Gardens High in western Kingston and at Montego Bay High School for Girls.
Girls learned to apply generative AI to climate and disaster challenges: forecasting extreme weather, early-warning systems, evacuation planning, emergency-response coordination and community rebuilding. Digicel Foundation CEO Charmaine Daniels said, "If we don't intentionally bring our girls into this space now, we risk leaving an entire generation behind," while STEM Spark Solutions CEO Dianne Plummer noted the girls "know what it feels like when a Category 5 hurricane tears through your neighbourhood."
Montego Bay High School for Girls' six-student team won with "Pulse-Rescue AI", an app that instantly shares a user's location with first responders during a storm; team member Gabrianna Smith said AI "can actually develop our ideas into innovation." A Denham Town/Tivoli Gardens participant, grade 9 student Ameerah Burke, said the hackathon sparked her interest in building AI systems for disaster prediction. Caveat: reported evidence is limited to hackathon outputs, organiser statements and student quotes across two independent news outlets; no independent, structured learning-outcome evaluation has been published.

Read the full analysis: https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20260425/montego-bay-high-wins-hackathon-hurricane-response-app