About us

 

A way to find safe drinking water. A tool to identify and remove invasive species.
Air quality monitors. Tools to detect lethal fake drugs.

Apps to help lonely kids connect.

This is Technovation.

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We are a global tech education nonprofit that empowers girls to become leaders, creators and problem-solvers.

Our Technovation Girls program equips young women (ages 8-18) to become tech entrepreneurs and leaders. With the support of volunteer mentors and parents, girls work in teams to code mobile apps that address real-world problems.

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A collaborative approach

Our learning model

We use a three-part model to help girls develop greater self-efficacy and change their attitudes towards STEM.

1. Identify real-world problems: Participants find a problem in their community and develop a solution to it, which helps bring technology to life in an immediate, tangible way.

2. Build a team: Participants work in teams—girls work with a group of friends supported by a mentor (and a parent, if the girls are younger than 12!) and connected to a local Chapter or Club Ambassador. Together they brainstorm, share the workload, and cheer each other on. When everyone's contributing, everyone is also building a long-term community of learning.

3. Get the Community Involved: We dedicate time to building trust with the local community leaders who bring Technovation to their schools, organizations, or towns. Technovation programs are designed to be flexible, so they can align with diverse community needs and goals and plug in to existing support networks.

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80%

80% of students are more confident in their ability to solve problems

83%

of mentors report being more creative

90%

of parents felt like technology and lifelong learning skills were important

We think transparency is important. That's why we're open about what we've learned from 14 years of running technology education programs.

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Partners

An enormous thank you to our Partners. See a full list of our corporate partners.

OUR
HISTORY

Founded in 2006 as Iridescent, Technovation was born out of an idea CEO Tara Chklovski had gotten hooked on as an engineer at USC. Looking around at her fellow grad students, Tara realized how few women and people of color were in the room. Determined to change that – not just in her cohort, but everywhere – she left and started our organization to reach young people and get them excited about science, technology, and innovation.

Technovation’s first program, Family Science, began in 2007 at one school in Los Angeles, and then spread to more schools in the area, and eventually the San Francisco Bay Area. From there, the organization began to grow, learning to create programs at school, spreading to New York and Chicago and Florida. And then, in 2010, the Technovation Girls program launched. In 2012, a site dedicated to hands-on design challenges for students of all ages launched, and in 2013, the programs went global.

Since 2013, we’ve focused on improving our model, developing stronger curriculum, engaging more industry experts as mentors, judges, and advisers, and learning about our programs’ impact – and how to deepen it.

We’re still learning and growing, and we hope you’ll join us. 

Our strategy

We believe transparency is key to develop trust, and want to share why we do what we do. Explore the documents that guide our strategy and model, and read our recent annual report for our reflections on what we’ve accomplished this year, what it’s taught us, and how we want to do even better moving forward.

Technovation's Strategic Plan

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2023 Annual Report

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Charity Navigator Rated

Four Star Charity

Technovation is a Charity Navigator Four Star charity. Charity Navigator is America's premier independent charity evaluator.

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Guidestar Rated

Platinum Level

Technovation is a 2023 Platinum-level nonprofit rated by Candid, which provides the most comprehensive data and insights about the social sector. Learn more about our rating on our GuideStar profile.

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