LTS Digital Inclusion Hackathon: 38 students brought together to fight poverty
For our first international edition of a hackathon, we brought together, alongside our main financial education sponsor Fondation ABBL pour l’éducation financière and other partners, young minds from around the world with the aim of fighting poverty with smart technologies.
Working together to fight poverty
From the 5th to 7th of February, 19 international and 19 Luxembourg Tech School students joined forces, immersing themselves in this two-day intensive online hackathon to fight poverty.
Coming from Egypt, Armenia and Luxembourg, the students impressed audience members with their vision, agility and creativity in tackling one of the most important issues we face today: fighting poverty and helping those who are left behind by the traditional financial services industry. In 48 hours, the students worked tirelessly to build the future of inclusive digital finance products and services, taking the shape of mobile applications for small investments, financial education chatbots, decentralised peer-to-peer lending platforms, and more.
The students challenged themselves to bring to life mature projects, ready to be implemented. Each of the 11 teams was supported by the LTS coaches and a range of international mentors coming from the finance and technology industries, as well as those tackling financial inclusion directly, with concrete experience on the ground - notably on the African market - which provided valuable real-world perspective.
On Sunday afternoon, after an intensive weekend, the students pitched their ideas in front of a jury composed of Eric Busch, CEO of Nexten.io; Bénédicte Godefroid, Project Manager at ADA; Hilda Moraa, CEO of Pezesha; Rasha Negm, Head of Fintech and Innovation at the Central Bank of Egypt and Nasir Zubairi, CEO of the LHoFT.
After intense deliberation, the 3 top prizes went to:
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1st Prize to Loan4All with a money prize of 1600 euros
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2nd Prize to Savify with a money prize of 900 euros
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3rd Prize to Synergy with a money prize of 500 euros