Rothesay Netherwood School's Effervescent team (Image: Submitted)
A group of Rothesay Netherwood School (RNS) students are Canadian semi-finalists at this year’s Technovation World Summit awards.
Technovation is a global tech education non-profit that fosters entrepreneurship in young women and encourages them become leaders, creators, and innovators through learning to code apps that address real-world problems.
“This is the first year that Technovation NB was large enough to have a club and the first year that they had teams,” says RNS Director of Technology and Learning Initiatives, Tammy Earle, adding that four RNS teams, for a total of 16 students were involved in Technovation NB this year.
The teams worked together for 12-weeks on their projects with industry experts from J.D. Irving, Limited, Hemmings House Pictures, ConnexionWorks, and NBCC.
The semi-finalist team, Effervescent is made up of Grade 11 and 12 students Emily Kay, Jenna Kong, Laura Thompson and Angela Xu. They created and coded Indono, an app that helps reduce textile waste created by fast fashion through matching non-profit organizations with people looking to donate gently used clothing.
Working away on the app, Indono (Image: Submitted)
“We’re actually all part of the Environmental Committee, so sustainability is something that we all are very interested in and very passionate about,” said Effervescent member, Emily Kay. “Being able to focus our idea on something we really are passionate about was something that we wanted to focus on with our app.”
Each Effervescent team member has different strengths, each applied to different components of the Indono app, from its business plan to its design and coding.
“It’s all part of the cycle and what was really neat is they worked as a team to get all the pieces together,” said Earle, who adds Indono is a fully functioning app with the team currently working on the paperwork make it available on the Apple App store. “What this has shown them is that they can make a difference,” added Earle.
“I’ve definitely learned a lot from this program,” shared Kay. “I feel like I’ve learned way more than I would have if I didn’t take it. It’s such a unique experience.”
Effervescent is one of ten semi-finalists in Canada’s Senior Division, with 41 countries competing at the world summit this year.
The national semi-finalists will virtually share their ideas before a panel of international judges August 12 and 13.
