Technovation Challenge

I am turning out to be one hell of a busy bee nowadays ey? Why, you might ask…Well, my weekends are now being fully booked by new and exciting events and activities which I am more than happy to take part in. And the second Saturday of this month was no different!

I was to make my way to Riara Corporate Suites where there the +Akili Dada offices are. Purpose…the Technovation Challenge!! Before I delve in further on why I was there, a brief introduction to what this challenge is all about would be fit…don’t you think?

 

So what is it? Technovation is a technology entrepreneurship program and competition for young women. Through an intense 3-month, 50-hour curriculum, teams of young women work together to imagine, design and develop mobile applications, then pitch their “start-up” businesses to investors. Technovation teachers coordinate teams of up to 5 young women to work with female professional mentors to come up with an app idea, conduct user research, create a business plan, design an app and develop a prototype. The information if from the Technovation Challenge website, visit it to read more.

And that’s where I come in! My good friends +Mercy Orangi, +Maria Mumoki, +margaret adhiambo and +Mercy Owiti among others together with me will be working as mentors to the young women. I actually got to learn of this through +margaret adhiambo who asked me if I would be interested in the mentorship and of course I agreed.

That Saturday was actually a training to the mentors. To help us to know how to lead the students that would be assigned to us. That morning was very chilly to begin with. And to add in salt to injury, I didn’t even know the bearing to the +Akili Dada offices. You can therefore guess the kind of battle I had going on in my head when it came to waking up! But I did not listen to that little doubtful voice because the day turned out to be more than a training experience. I would have missed out on a lot!

We were taken through how to use app inventor to develop the apps. App inventor is a product of Google. It is an easy tool to use as it is basically a drag and drop thing. No prior programming experience is necessary for the students and even the mentors. But I have to admit, having one does help as it makes understanding the logic behind it very effortless. The designs are made on a webpage, assemble pieces of logic blocks together on an editor. The pieces are joined together like a puzzle game.

This is the tool that we will be teaching the students and they can use it to create applications that will be solving a current situation that the community faces.

 

Usually at the end of the challenge, the apps that have been developed will face a panel of experienced people who will judge the applications and give their advice to the teams. The winning team gets funding to further their app development.

At the end of the training session, we got to learn the high schools that we would go to as mentors. +Mercy Orangi and +margaret adhiambo will be heading to Loreto Limuru while +Maria Mumoki and I were posted to Mary Hill Girls. The training will kick off on the 22nd of this month. Whoop whoop!! I can’t wait.

 

I will be keeping you posted on how that goes over the coming 12 weeks but for now let me leave you with a video which I found online regarding this whole topic. Enjoy!!

Thank you for your lovely audience. It’s always a pleasure :)

Have a lovely evening guys.

Remember to always do cool things that matter!!

#happydays