The 2025 Girls STEAM Institute Global Business Challenge was held in ENGAGE XR October 4-6, 2025. The four teams of young women from around the world presented solutions on mental health in the startup-weekend-meets-hackathon special event as part of GSI’s participation in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The Girls STEAM Institute Top Innovation Award recognizes the team whose business concept demonstrates exceptional creativity and technological ingenuity, advancing solutions that align with STEAM fields and real-world issues.
The Top Social Impact Award honors the team whose project achieves significant potential for positive change, focusing on social benefit and aligning with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, such as mental health, climate, or equity.
Both awards celebrate young women’s leadership in developing impactful business ideas within immersive and collaborative STEAM environments.
The awards were handed out by the Business Challenge judges, Doug Hohulin of Exponetial Blueprint Consulting and Evgeniya Simmons of Vertex Form 3D.
Team Steminists from Texas won for the Top Innovation Award. The presentation by Aven C, Amaria S, Aishah A, and Laila N was for an app called “Anchor: Master Your Mind, Power Over Panic.” Designed to help teenagers with anxiety using minimal resources was proposed to help teens focus, find peace of mind and daily mood assessment to check-in with their feelings and help self-regulate. Their freemium model allowed for app funding from users as well as investors and startup funding.
Code Dune from Namibia won Top Social Impact Award. The presentation by Johanna S, Saimi A, Vikapita, I, and Cherice S proposed an app called Here4U, specifically addressing mental health challenges in Namibia. They identified the cultural stigma for young women graduating from school who cannot find full-time employment, challenged by limited access by internet and travel distances. The freemium app proposed a community portal app with an option to expand into social VR, expanding connections and communication that breaks through the barriers of distance. With a strong focus on privacy, the app would serve students and young professionals to help them address the concerns of academic stress, unemployment, and social pressures. Partnered with schools, universities, and NGOs, their goal would be to build a network of 3,000 paying users a year, plus outside funding and support of mental health professionals, to scale the app and program.
The other two teams tackled mental health solutions in similar but distinct ways.
The Owlettes, made up of youth from across the United States, presented “Soulscape Labs: Where Technology Meets Tranquility.” The app focused on solving the challenge of young people not having someone to talk to or ways to feel better, and use relaxing music, breathing exercises, and gamification for distraction for fun and interaction with trained AI chatbots to help students vent and find renewed motivation through therapeutic interactions.
XR Girls Africa represented Kenya for their Project Elysia, a holistic well-being app focused on artistry to integrate physical, emotional, social, and spiritual features through a matching program of youth with older volunteer mentors and supporting resources. This expansive program tapped into the cultural challenges of youth feeling ignored and unappreciated by connecting them with older mentors to share common interests with poetry, meditation, music, writing, and more to form a artists hub and support network. Participants in Kenya watched the live stream of the event in their Africa VR Campus in Nairobi.
Girls STEAM Institute congratulates all of the participants. The competition was very close and each team proposed a solution to today’s mental health challenges that could easily be pursued and successful.
