Star Weekly is looking back at the best stories of last year and this is one of them.
Three young girls with the help of their mums, won a United Nations award through the Tech Girls Foundation.
The foundation runs a yearly competition to encourage girls into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
Emily, Emmaline and Ada are close friends from St Mary’s in Williamstown, who began this 12 week project when Emily’s mum, Karen Vella, began looking into ways to get her daughter interested in STEM.
“I was doing a bit of research as to what was out there and I came across this competition,” she said.
“I approached the school but they weren’t able to take it on with us, so I approached Emily’s two best friends and their mums to work with us.”
Karen said this year the competition was about identifying a problem in the community and coming up with a solution by developing an app.
“The girls brainstormed multiple ideas that were affecting Hobsons Bay,” she said.
“The girls went into council and spoke to the mayor who was talking about waste disposal and how it is a big problem in Hobsons Bay.”
The team ended up settling on an app which rewards the community for throwing away rubbish in the right bins.
“The idea is to have the four bins set up for children to scan rubbish, identify which bin it goes in and collect reward points which can be redeemed for prizes for doing the right thing.”
While the competition is open to anybody, Karen said more schools are adopting it as a way to integrate it into the curriculum.
“Many of the groups were doing it through their schools but we did it in our own time, it was hard work but it paid off.”
Jennifer Pittorino
