Vanessa joined Apps and Girls since April 2017 where we taught her about coding and entrepreneurial skills. She has become very fond of our programs and she has developed into an innovative and creative young girl. She was a 3^rd winner of Girls Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 under her project called Gas Leakage Detection. This year she was on team robotics that represented Tanzania to the First Global Robotics Challenge in Mexico. Below is Vanessa talking more about her projects and experiences with Apps and Girls.

• Since I joined Apps and Girls, I got exposed to wonderful young girls who are doing wonderful things in the community through IT. A good example is Winnie Godlove who inspired me a lot to join Apps and Girls. At Apps and Girls, I met many girls who are doing things I never imagined a young girl could – especially when it comes to coding.
• At Apps and Girls, I’ve been able to learn coding programs like scratch, HTML, Java and Arduino. I also learn about entrepreneurship skills, pitching, and business model. I was actually stunned to realize that I can actually make changes through coding. With the help of this knowledge from my mentors at Apps and Girls I managed to come up with my own project called Gas Leakage Detection, which I presented on Girls Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 and became a third winner.

What sort of a problem (s) does your project aims to bring solution to?

• My project aims at bringing solution to the problem of fire accidents that occur in factories or in offices or at home due to gas leakage, by creating a device that will act like gas leakage detector. I had come up with this project because I realized that most of fire accidents that occur at homes or at industries are caused by undetected gas leakage. My device will be connected to mobiles and computers and it will give alerts to users if it detects gas leakage so they can act immediately to prevent fire accident. This device will ensure safety in people’s lives and their property.

What is the most important experience you have got at Apps and Girls?

• My best experience is when I participated in First Global Robotics Challenges where we represented our country in Mexico. Although I didn’t travel with my team to Mexico because of my school timetable, I felt hilarious to be on a team. The process of making a robot that we created at Apps and Girls was ecstatic to me, it involves physics, chemistry, mathematics and sometimes biology —which relates much to what I study at school.