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The schoolgirls of Vahan Tekeyan Basic School in Karbi village of Armenia's Aragatsotn Province were selected as finalists of the 2017 Technovation Challenge international competition, winning the People's Choice Award for an app to help people learn Armenian Sign Language.

The contest was held on 7-11 August in Silicon Valley, the Unites States. The Armenian schoolgirls’ team has already returned to Armenia, Satenik Hakobyan, Headmaster of Vahan Tekeyan Basic School told Panorama.am, adding that they have not yet met with the girls.

The team of the schoolgirls called “One Step Ahead” features Aghavni Hakobyan, Sona Avetisyan, Svetlana Davtyan and Violeta Mkrtchyan and Vardanush Nazaretyan, with Vardanush Hovhannisyan (Informatics teacher) as their mentor.

“The competition was held in six categories: peace, poverty, environment, equality, education, and health, with all the finalist teams [Armenian team was finalist in Education category] travelled to Silicon Valley to take part in World Pitch Summit award ceremony.

The Armenian team won the People's Choice Award,” the headmaster said, adding that all the six finalist teams have been granted $10,000 award to further develop their mobile applications.

The four girls from Kazakhstan behind a safety app called QamCare were crowned the winner of the Senior Division.

Technovation Challenge 2017 is the world’s largest technology entrepreneurship competition for schoolgirls aged 10-18. Its twelve-week program has a mission to inspire and empower young women to become leaders and innovators by solving problems in their community using technology and entrepreneurship. 
More than 11,000 girls from 103 countries took part in Technovation Challenge this year.