Five high school students from Kisumu Girls have won recognition after inventing a mobile application aimed at helping the fight against Female Genital MutilationIvy Akinyi, 16 and Macrine Akinyi, 15 both in Form Two and their Form Four colleagues Purity Achieng, Synthia Auma and Stacey Adhiambo have won a chance to pitch a business plan for the application at the Technovation World Pitch Summit in San Francisco in August.
The five progressed to the global platform after winning the Africa Technovation Challenge, bagging Sh1 million to help them finesse the software dubbed iCut before presenting it to the world.
In San Francisco, the girls stand the opportunity of meeting the brains behind world giant techs like Facebook and Google, on top of the chance to rake in Sh1.5 million more to expand their application which is accessible on android powered devices.
They students are among 25 students from five educational centres in Kisumu who were approached by Technovation Africa and challenged to develop a mobile phone based application that would to solve a community problem.
The App has features that allow users to connect with FGM victims for moral support and connect those at risk with rescue centres around them. It also lists health facilities where one can refer victims for medical attention and examination services to help bring culprits t book.
It has a simple user interface with five buttons – help, rescue, report, information on FGM, donate and feedback – that guide the user on the service they want to access.
Working under the mentorship of Kisumu’s Lakehub Community Centre, the girls said they first listed more than 20 thematic challenges before settling on FGM, which has attracted a lot of advocacy recently.
“We wanted to create a platform which improves the communication on FGM, one on which all stakeholders including advocacies and victims can share and access information so as to step the fight the vice,” said Purity Achieng.
She said they were motivated by the fact Armed only with basic coding skills taught to them in computer studies, the five first sketched the idea then generated a paper porotype before
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