Nigerian schoolgirls develop app to help underprivileged children get education funding | EduCeleb
Abdussalam Amoo
19th August 2019
A group of five Nigerian schoolgirls working as team ‘Brain Squad’ have developed an app that would help finance the education of poor children “across the world”.
The members of the team include Jadesola Kassim, Munachiso Chigbo, Pandora Onyedire, Ayomikun Ariyo and Ivana Mordi.
They all attend Standard Bearers School, a secondary school in Lekki Phase 1 area of Lagos.
The app created by the quintet is called “Handsout”.
“Handsout” sources funds and educational materials from people around the world and gives them to children who can’t afford them.
The young girls aged around 11 represented the country at the 2019 Technovation World Pitch summit, which held on 15th August, 2019, in California.
The girls said that the collapse of a building that houses a primary school in Lagos back in March 2019 was what inspired them to develop the app.
“On 16th of March 2019, the tragic news of a building which had a primary school within at Itafaji Lagos collapsed. Many children died and others were injured,” they were quoted to have said.
“The community was thrown into morning and the surviving children can’t understand why friends and relatives had to die. They need hope.”
This feat got praised by the American Embassy in Nigeria on its Twitter handle.
The Technovation World Pitch summit will help them network, refine their proposal, and pitch their app in order to make a positive impact in their local communities.