Applying to the Orange Innovation Challenge using Adafruit gear with @MSMakeCode

Greencore solutions, the folks behind the Costa Rican Isla del Coco work we highlighted previously write:

The Inter-American Development Bank has created a contest for grant funds about “Orange Economy” which just added video-games as some of the topics covered.

Greencore is entering with a mini-career in video game programming using in Day 1 Makecode with PyBadges (which are available in Costa Rica. In the future hopefully PyGammers with the large screen. Don’t ask, their not out yet ), and then moving on to programming with Python/CircuitPython, digital illustration and more, with all of the content created (like all our courses) in Creative Commons.

You can see their entry in the video above.

The Orange Innovation Challenge sounds really great:

The challenge seeks to identify business models that use cutting-edge technologies to support their implementation in the 9 target countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

The prize consists of the pre-selection of proposals that will be considered by IDB Lab to receive financing. The amount of the financing is from $ 150,000 to $ 500,000 depending on the categories in which it applies (grant or innovation prototypes).

We hope the Greencor entry is chosen as we’d like to see this hardware and software assisting with Costa Rican STEM.