A two-day long third Bracathon, a hackathon competition, was held to select young tech-savvy minds that can put creativity into action to utilize problem solving skills and come up with an effective technology solution to a particular challenge.
The Bracathon, organized by Brac, was held at GP House at city’s Bashundhara Residential area from Friday through Saturday.
A total of 40 finalists from over 300 initial applications were selected this year.
A total of 20 teams from public and private universities took part in the competition.
In addition, Bracathon has also brought in tech enthusiasts from five startups.
Five winning teams will receive a prize money amounting to Tk4,00,000 in addition, incubation facilities from Grameenphone and technical assistance from Brac.
At the program the finalists choose the problems they wanted to solve and Brac arranged field visits at its project areas so that the participants could get a clear idea about the social problem they are addressing.
The young tech-savvy minds will work tirelessly to offer solutions to social problems related to health, micro-finance, education, technology and poverty.
Md Tariqul Islam, project coordinator of Brac Technology Division, said the goal of hackathon competition is to engage youths to solve social problems using technology.
“More than 50% of Bangladesh population is youth and many of them are students or enthusiasts of technology. There are many social problems in Bangladesh and if you go out to the field, you will be able to develop tech-based solutions to these problems,” said Shahriar Hoque, associate director of the Technology Division of Brac.
Kishwara Sara, a team member of “Shongshoptok” from Jahangirnagar University, said they are developing an app for the Brac school teachers so that they do not have to take attendance manually.
“We figured that it takes a lot of time taking attendance manually in schools. We are using face recognition attendance system solve this problem,” said Kishwara.
Kishwara said teachers have to take one photo of the entire class in the beginning of each class and upload it in the app.
“It will save a lot of time for teachers and students,” she said.
Teachers can submit their evaluation report directly to their superiors through this app.
Brac organized the competition in partnership with Brac IT Services (BITS), a software company; Grameenphone, Dell Technologies and Brac Bank.
