Vodafone Egypt Holds Hackathon for Artificial intelligence technologies for Persons with Disabilities Sponsored by the Ministry of Communications and Informations Technology (MCIT)

Project : National Network for Services for Persons with Disabilities

By sponsor of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT-Egypt), Vodafone Egypt organized a hackathon for Artificial Intelligence based technologies for helping persons with disabilities to develop tools specialized to facilitating the lives of individuals with special needs in aspects of their daily and work lives, from 26 to 29 January 2023. The Minister's Advisor for Digital Community Development at MCIT Hoda Dahrouj participated in the competition jury committee of the winning projects, coming out of MCIT vision towards supporting and empowering persons with disabilities, and the importance of benefiting from their capabilities and integrating them into society.
The Minister's Advisor pointed out that the hackathon is a great opportunity for the technological empowerment of persons with disabilities that providing them with the opportunity to join the labor market  which meets with MCIT strategy for digital transformation, and its interest in achieving an inclusive society for all groups, especially persons with disabilities, by creating technological tools and applications that facilitate their daily dealing, and provide them with a safe and appropriate work environment for their abilities. She added that the group of young people participating in the hackathon presented promising ideas, and were distinguished by the spirit of ambition and determination, as all those who participated in this competition are considered winners from this experience through exposure and contact with many ideas and projects that had been discussed with their colleagues. Mahmoud El Khatib, Head of Business sector at Vodafone Egypt, expressed his pride in the ideas presented during the hackathon, refering that they reflect the awareness and innovation enjoyed by young people who need entities to adopt the transformation of their ideas into tangible tools and products, which is the role played by the company within the framework of its strategy to support the innovations of young cadres, especially those that help people with disabilities and facilitate their life tasks. In the same context, Naglaa Kenawy, Head of Human Resources at Vodafone Egypt, said that persons with disabilities possess tremendous capabilities and distinct potentials, which must be optimally invested to achieve the maximum benefit from them, by providing them with the necessary mechanisms and tools, and contributing to providing innovative solutions to help them accomplish their work tasks, enhance their role and integrate them into society in an optimal manner. On the last day of the events, the names of the winning projects were announced, as the first place prize in the hackathon was won by the health-gram project, worth EGP 250,000, in addition to providing an opportunity to incubate the idea until its implementation, and the second place came the signIN project, and the project will receive training opportunities for incubating projects and technology tools, and the AccessME project came in third place, and Vodafone will provide training to the owners of the idea on incubating projects.
It is worth mentioning that the hackathon, which witnessed the participation of 30 young people, including 13 with disabilities, comes within the framework of Vodafone Egypt's social responsibility efforts aimed at empowering people of determination in the workplace via encouraging young people to innovate technological solutions that contribute to providing support to persons with disabilities in all walks of life.