Five Kenyan high school girls will be at the Technovation competition in California U.S. after they created an app, I-cut which seeks to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
The five teenagers, aged 15 to 17, are the only Africans selected to take part in this year’s international Technovation competition, where girls develop mobile apps to end problems in their communities. They hope to win $15,000.
The competition takes place from the 7th to the 11th of August.
“FGM is a big problem affecting girls worldwide and it is a problem we want to solve,” Stacy Owino told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, while snacking on chocolate on a break from boarding school before flying to the United States on Aug. 6.
The five girls from Kenya’s western city of Kisumu call themselves the ‘Restorers’ because they want to “restore hope to hopeless girls”, said Synthia Otieno, one of the team.
The APP connects girls at risk of FGM with rescue centres and gives legal and medical help to those who have been cut.
Its simple interface has five buttons – help, rescue, report, information on FGM, donate and feedback – offering users different services.
FGM, involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia.
The practice is illegal in Kenya but some communities’ still practice the act.
