Building on the successful pilot at the beginning of this year, Etijah Coaching and Consulting Services has launched a second edition of the MENA Hackathon, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and in partnership with Tamkeen Bahrain. The virtual hackathon invites high school students aged 14-18, and university students and fresh graduates aged 18-30, to innovate tech solutions for challenges in the Healthcare, Energy, Environment & Sustainability sectors. Applications are already open and can be submitted through menahackathon.etijahcoaching.com, for teams of two to five individuals. 

With the support of mentors, shortlisted teams will be tasked with delivering prototypes over a period of 48 hours. Participants will be welcomed to leverage AWS’s advanced cloud technologies to come up with solutions to some of the most pressing challenges faced by the Healthcare, Energy, Environment and Sustainability sectors in the Middle East and North African regions. Upon the conclusion of the hackathon, selected teams will present their prototypes to a panel of judges, composed of representatives from both the public and private entities. The winning teams from each sector will be announced the following day on the 19th of September, 2021 and will receive a range of exciting AWS sponsored prizes, including mentoring sessions, business incubation opportunities, AWS promotional credits, and other prizes.

To prepare the teams for the hackathon, two online training days will be held on the 13th and 14th of September 2021, giving participants the opportunity to better understand the requirements of the hackathon, and have their questions answered through workshops, moderated speaker panels and informal meetings.

On the occasion of this collaboration, Dina Shabib, Founder and Managing Director of Etijah Coaching and Consulting Services said, “We are so honored to be organizing the MENA Hackathon for the second time in a row with our esteemed partners. At Etijah, we strongly believe that the youth are the leaders of this era and therefore look forward to executing an initiative such as the MENA Hackathon, which aims to support the youth in identifying and enhancing their potential skills.”

Nidal Al Basha, Digital Innovation Lead, AWS Cloud Innovation Centers-Bahrain, said, “We are delighted to once again collaborate with Etijah and Tamkeen Bahrain for the launch of the second edition of the MENA Hackathon. Based on the outstanding results from the first run, we are expecting that the young aspiring participants will raise the bar with their problem solving ideas in this new edition. We look forward to further extending the resources of the AWS Cloud Innovation Centers to support the MENA Hackathon winning teams.”

Registration for the MENA Hackathon is now open, and will close on September 7, 2021.