Beirut, September 09, 2019: Geek Express, the leading offline and online edu-tech platform in Lebanon, that offers workshops and training for kids and teens in Coding, Engineering and Digital Design, announced that ‘World Quiz’ team won the first prize at the 2019th edition of the MIT App Inventor hackathon that took place in the United States. The Lebanese team ranked first in the beginners’ category ahead of Singapore, Europe, China, Hong Kong and USA.
Earlier this year, ‘World Quiz’ team won the touch sponsored App Jamming Summit hosted by, the biggest app development competition for school students in the MENA region, hosted by Geek Express, AJS city ambassador, on February 24th at Antwork, Hamra. The team members Karl Ethel, Rawan Saidy and Antoun Kassouf then headed off to MIT to participate and compete in the MIT App Inventor hackathon.
Geek Express Founder and CEO Manal Hakim said: ‘’Geek Express was founded with the idea of empowering youth through tech literacy. Winning this Hackathon at MIT, shows how committed we are to the cause. We are very proud of the mentors who accompanied our students throughout this exciting journey, but most importantly heads up to the winning team for their hard work, enthusiasm, and relentless curiosity!”
Commenting on this achievement, touch CEO Emre Gurkan said: “touch continuously aims to empower young minds as we believe that the youth have what it takes. Their talents and creativity are very much needed to disrupt and generate new business models for Lebanon, the region, and potentially the world”.
This year’s hackathon marked a special occasion as it was MIT Inventor’s 10th anniversary. Consecutively, this year’s theme was “Hack the Environment”, under which students were required to develop an app that serves in helping the environment within the timeline of 2 days.
The award-winning app “Be the Change” developed by ‘World Quiz’ team, consists of a platform that allows any Arab country resident to monitor the ecological problems occurring in various areas and contribute to solving them in a gamified approach. The team then submitted their idea to a jury of AI experts, ecology professors and Google engineers. All projects were reviewed, assessed, and tested.
About Geek Express
Geek Express is a complete online & offline platform that offers workshops and training for kids and teens in Coding, Engineering and Digital Design. Our mission is to bridge the gap between traditional curriculums taught at schools and the ever-increasing demand for STEAM skills related jobs. We aim to enable and empower young minds with the tools needed to be actively engaged in technology and have them ready for a future that relies heavily on Tech literacy.
About touch
touch is the leading mobile operator in Lebanon, managed by Zain Group, the pioneering mobile and data services operator in the Middle East and Africa. In the last thirteen years of operations under Zain’s management, touch has had many success stories, providing cutting-edge services and technology to its consumers.
Drawing from Zain’s regional expertise providing telecommunication and mobile data services to 50 million users, touch has devised and adopted a consumer-centric strategy. touch’s range of services and its 3.9G and 4.5G coverage of all Lebanese territories has allowed it to gain a 54% wireless telecommunication market share in Lebanon. touch employs specialized and competent Lebanese personnel that aims to provide the latest in telecommunication services and products to the local community to help it grow in a more sustainable way.
touch, with the backing of Zain and its cooperation with the Lebanese Ministry of Telecommunications, dedicates all its resources to keeping up with the latest in telecom and mobile data. It offers a 24/7 call center service to cater to the need of its customers for uninterrupted connection.
touch values the local community, perceiving it as a major partner; its mission and vision reflect a dedication to humanitarian, social, and cultural causes, as well as creativity and innovation, which it considers integral to advancing its social responsibility program.