Tinkering with Tech and AI — UNICEF's Girls-Inclusive STEM Pilot in San Pedro Sula, Honduras

UNICEF's Global Learning and Innovation Hub, based in Helsinki, runs ‘Tinkering with Tech and AI’ as a hands-on STEM and AI-literacy pilot built around programmable Micro:bit boards. In Honduras, delivery partner the Micro:bit Educational Foundation has worked since 2023 with more than 100 educational centres across four departments in the country's north, including schools around San Pedro Sula, Villanueva and Puerto Cortés.
The programme explicitly targets equity: UNICEF materials describe girls as ‘very often overlooked’ in STEM and say they receive dedicated support to advance their learning pathways alongside boys. Students use design-thinking methods to build projects such as flood-warning systems and agriculture tools, while teachers and school leaders are trained directly on Micro:bit lesson plans.
Honduras was one of four 2024 pilot countries (with Maldives, Montenegro and Vietnam); by 2026 the initiative was expanding further with new partners Arm and the Raspberry Pi Foundation and a stronger AI focus, alongside planned expansion to Lao PDR and Uzbekistan. Published evidence to date is descriptive — teacher and student confidence gains reported in partner statements — rather than an independent quantitative evaluation, and no disaggregated results for girls have been released.

Read the full analysis: https://microbit.org/news/2026-03-05/scaling-up-tinkering-with-tech-with-unicef/