Like every year, Apple organized the Swift Student Challange, a competition that allows younger developers to show their best work to win, in addition to their own recognition and promotion, a place in the WWDC. Today, less than seven days before the start of the developer conference, Apple announced the winners and it also highlighted the work of three young people.
Recognition and the opportunity to expand your work
The goal of this competition is to select over 350 students from 35 countries and regions to attend the developer conference from a prominent location. While it is true that in a virtual WWDC some of the benefits of winning this contest are slightly unclear, the recognition of a job well done and the possibility of exhibiting it It is more than common.
“Each year we are inspired by the talent and ingenuity of our Swift Student Challenge candidates,” said Susan Prescott, vice president of global developer relations and business and educational marketing at Apple. “This year, we are incredibly proud that more young women than ever have applied and won, and we are committed to doing all we can to continue this progress and achieve true gender parity.”
Among all the Apple winners decided to highlight three young women They are not only using technology to solve real world problems, but are actively teaching the next generation to do the same.
Gianna Yan, 13
The first young woman to receive the distinction among the 350 awarded students is 13-year-old Gianna Yan. With her sister, this young developer created an application called Feed Fleet. The service is used to match volunteers with people at risk So the delivery of essential goods can be done right at your doorstep.
Not content with that, Yan joined The Farmlink Project, a nonprofit organization created by students that helps farms run connect your surplus products to food banks. In just over a year, the project has redirected more than 15 million kilograms of food.
Yan began exploring how to use technology at the age of 13, when he created a web application aimed at increasing voter turnout and civic engagement of millennials. She then won a Congressional Enforcement Challenge, and Yan met and chatted with her congressman, Barbara Lee.
“After this conversation,” Yan said, “where we were talking about the digital divide within our shared town of Oakland, I started my own workshop to teach BIPOC elementary students to code.”
Abinaya Dinesh, 15 years old
The second young woman to receive the distinction is Abinaya Dinesh, 15, who is very interested in the intersection and questioning of medicine and technology.
“I went to a gastroenterologist and he diagnosed me with a pelvic floor disorder,” Dinesh said, “but then he didn’t tell me anything about how he was supposed to get better.”
In response, Dinesh created an app called Gastro at Home, which he plans to launch on the App Store this summer. The app offers people with gastrointestinal disorders a way to access information and resourcesEspecially since it can sometimes be sensitive to talk about these kinds of conditions.
Over the past year, Dinesh also launched her own nonprofit, Impact AI, to foster learning and skills. ethical practices in artificial intelligence among young people. In doing so, she launched an eight-week high school program, Girls in AI, to teach young women the basics of programming and machine learning.
“I’m going big in teaching,” Dinesh said. “It is very important to show the next generation that this technology exists and can lead to huge advances in medicine and in society. And I am proud that after the end of the program, some seniors at the university are waiting for me. They said that this experience changed what was going to be their specialty. “
Damilola Awofisayo, 17 years old
Finally, we found Damilola Awofisayo, 17, who after participating in several programming marathons decided to start her own marathon with a friend. The one who received the name of TecHacks is a non-profit organization whose objective is “create a favorable environment for girls around the world to create, problem-solve and show off your talents with like-minded women to compete and work. “
“We started TecHacks with the idea that we know what we like, we know what we don’t like and we know what can improve it specifically for girls,” Awofisayo said. “I was also able to include other Nigerian girls in our TecHacks team, and it is important to me that we continue to inspire people not only from Nigeria, but other countries who may not have had the same opportunities that we have here. “
“Technological innovations are evolving at a very rapid rate,” he said. “However, there is not enough talk about fairness or how it should serve people from all walks of life. But when you increase the number of girls in tech, you also see a change in the issues being addressed and the solutions. And I’m delighted to be a part of it. “
The ultimate goal of Apple’s WWDC contest is one more way to support and nurture the next generation of developers. Stories like those of these three women inspire us to create similar projects, and conferences like the one at WWDC bring us closer to the tools that can enable us to make them happen.
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