Breaking Barriers: Meet The Tech Girls Of Dharavi
Dharavi Diary - the story of teenage girls building apps and busting community problems.
A group of young girls have brought technology, innovation and sparkle to Dharavi, a two-and-a-half-square-kilometre sprawl of shanties in Mumbai, Asia’s largest.
Dharavi Diary has made it to TEDx and won a Google Rise Award. But more importantly, its given young girls the courage to fight back.
A group of 20-25 girls mapped out problems like safety of women, education for underprivileged girls and waste disposal that plagues Dharavi. The girls—part of the non-profit organisation that started in 2014—were guided to code apps using an open-source tool called MIT App Inventor. That helped them build three mobile apps—Women Fight Back, Padhayi Hai Meri Haq and Clean & Green—to resolve community issues.
While Women Fight Back was tested and launched on Google Play Store, the other two couldn’t be launched because of insufficient infrastructure and resources.
But that didn’t dampen the spirits of these girls who juggle their time between school and working for Dharavi Diary.
BloombergQuint gets you the story of Zaberi Ansari (18), Kiran Verma (16) and Savita Soni (18), and the challenges faced by them and their achievements.