Orange held the first edition of the Orange Summer Challenge award ceremony, after concluding the challenge that was launched at the Orange Digital Center, one of the company’s key programs with GIZ under the theme “Tech4Good” to support passionate, talented students in tech majors to create innovative solutions for sustainable development in cooperation with Ernest and Young (EY) and Google.

The award ceremony was attended by the Acting Director of Investment & Entrepreneurship at the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, Liza Habashneh, the Partner at EY Jordan, Ali Samara, Regional Technical Advisor at GIZ, Mahmoud El Sherbiny, the CEO of Orange Jordan, Thierry Marigny, and media representatives.

The five participating teams pitched their projects at the event, which hosted more than 150 experts and professionals from academia, communications and information technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

The three challenge winners were announced after evaluation, and received prizes from Orange Jordan, GIZ, as well as the EY prize, based on the project’s efficiency and sustainable impact.

This year’s Orange Summer Challenge is the first in Jordan, and the twelfth in countries where the group operates in the Middle East and Africa, offering interested university students in tech and engineering majors three months of intensive training to develop collective capabilities in areas of web and mobile development, digital fabrication skills, UX/UI design, industrial design, artificial intelligence, big data, data science, and embedded systems.

The teams received training and mentorship in innovation from local and international expert trainers, including 18-24 sessions by Google and EY.

The training also offered resources from the Coding School and tools and devices from the FabLab Solidaire, both free programs Orange is executing through the Orange Digital Center, in addition to the support in launching projects, soft, personal, and professional skills to prepare the participants for the final pitch.

CEO of Orange Jordan, Thierry Marigny, congratulated the winning projects in the first Orange Summer Challenge, praising the participants’ innovation and the collaboration of Orange and GIZ.

Marigny also stressed the importance of the challenge in upskilling talented students in the most in-demand technologies and providing them with the necessary tools to launch socioeconomically feasible projects, stemming from Orange’s role as a responsible digital leader seeking to support digital education and encouraging entrepreneurial ventures across Jordan.

The Orange Summer Challenge falls under the Orange and GIZ partnership to develop youth skills and support them in 9 Middle Eastern and African countries where the group operates, to develop innovative digital solutions for the most pressing social challenges to build a more sustainable, inclusive world.