Codegirl still from the movie
Codegirl, a film about schoolgirls all over the world facing off in a competition to create and release an app, has been released straight to YouTube.
Directed by Lesley Chilcott – who produced An Inconvenient Truth – the film follows groups of girls from various countries, each competing for a $10,000 prize.
To win, they must create apps that better their communities, taking in projects like water conservation education games for children in drought-ridden areas of Brazil, or waste disposal services in parts of Nigeria where illness is rife.
The app market is exploding and heavily dominated by men, so the Technovation Challenge featured in the film aims to address that.
Every year, Technovation challenges girls all over the world to build a mobile app that will address a community problem. Since 2010, nearly 5,000 girls from 60 countries have made submissions to Technovation, thanks to dedicated volunteers around the world.
The film was posted yesterday on YouTube and will stay up until tomorrow, before being released into some cinemas in the US and being made available for purchase online.
Iradescent, the operation behind the Technovation Challenge, is a non-profit focused on education and, in particular, STEM.
Iridescent CEO Tara Chklovski described the initiative as “a programme that has very high expectations of girls and believes in their abilities to lead, to change the world around them”.
Women Invent is Silicon Republic’s campaign to champion the role of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. It has been running since March 2013, and is kindly supported by Intel, Open Eir (formerly Eircom Wholesale), Fidelity Investments, Accenture and CoderDojo.
