Kuña Mbaretech virtual hackathon in Paraguay

Kuña Mbaretech is an open innovation contest in Hackathon format. Its aim is to help creatively solve, through the incorporation of digital technology, the challenges faced by women in situations of vulnerability in their daily lives. 

Given the pandemic conditions of 2020, Kuña Mbaretech is the first hackathon focused on the challenges of women and, at the same time, the first carried out in a 100% virtual format in Paraguay. Led by the Ministry of Women in alliance with the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communication of Paraguay, it is part of the actions to strengthen the Ciudad Mujer 2.0 Program, and has the support of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Japanese Government. The hackathon is developed under the coordination of KOGA.

As we all know, we are in an unprecedented situation that affects women, although it affects everyone, men and women, we can point out that women are victims in their homes due to the fact that they are locked up with their own aggressor. For this reason, we decided from the Ministry of Women with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to carry out these coordinated, decisive and innovative actions, to face this crisis generated by COVID-19.

In February, we held consultations to collectively build the challenges that women face on a daily basis, for which we launched the hackathon, convening all sectors that could contribute from technology, social sciences, companies and projects in action. As provided by presidential decree, the increase in preventive actions against the risk of the expansion of COVID-19 and with it a social distancing of the population and then a total quarantine is established until Sunday, April 19^th, the idea of holding a digital hackathon arose, which its opening is today with the slogan "stay at home" and at the same time contributes so that the digital solutions that we want to build do not delay any longer.

Nilda Romero Santacruz, Minister of Women

This digital tool is very powerful and will give us the opportunity to continue with our tasks, thanks to this important initiative. The country is experiencing difficult circumstances and the world is going through a crisis created by the Coronavirus, in this situation an important and essential step has been made, to give space for collaborative recreation to face the problems we have as a society, so I think this is the most opportune moment to go ahead with the hackathon. I want to recognize once again the leadership of the Minister for Women, Nila Romero Santacruz, who prioritizes all issues related with women, inclusion diversity, violence issues and brings herself to do different things like this.

Florencia Attademo-Hirt, IDB in Paraguay. 

I applaud in return the initiative taken by the Ministry of Women to take this step forward, regardless of the portfolio in question, we can all innovate and we can all acquire digital tools. I hope this is also a good example for other entities of the State, so that they can opt for digital tools to find solutions.

 Sebastián Ortiz Fiorio, General Director of Productive Innovation and Digital Economy of MITIC.

The online meetings were held on April 15^th, 16^th and 17^th, 2020. After a rigorous selection process, a total of 60 people were selected to participate in the contest that seeks to generate technological solutions to solve these challenges:

1. Digital decentralization of services for women

2. Prevention of violence against women

3. Empowerment education

4. Construction and exercise of citizenship

The activity is part of a set of actions that have been carried out to strengthen the Ciudad Mujer 2.0 Program, with technical support from the IDB through a donation from the government of Japan.