Film to have India premiere in Bengaluru.
By Sreekanth A Nair
An American documentary, directed by Lesley Chilcott, ‘CodeGirl’, featuring five Indian school girls, will be screened at PVR Cinemas in Forum Mall, Bengaluru, on February 12.
Niyati Dasari, Diya Marwah, Soumya Tejam, Cherryl Bibin and Shivalika Kohli, who class VIII students of National Public School, Indiranagar, Bengaluru, are featured in the documentary that spreads the message of women empowerment.
The documentary produced by Google revolves round the participants of the sixth edition of the Technovation Challenge. The participants are school girls from across the world that travels around the globe to learn to code and to create an App that solves a problem prevailing in their community.
Teams from the US, Nigeria, Brazil and India are featured in the film.
The team X of Bengaluru girls created an app that connects people with disabilities to find jobs.
“Our team X Women created an app called Cappable which connects persons with disabilities in India to job opportunities, skill training and other opportunities through their peers. The app will be provided to companies as a service to hire more persons with disabilities,” Shivalika Kohli, a member of the team was quoted as saying by The Times of India.
“When you see someone with disability doing work, you feel amazed, but then you also wonder why there aren’t more people like them. It will be great if we could give them a little push in achieving all they want,” she added.
The documentary coveys the message of women empowerment through the use of technology. The importance of engagement of women in technology lies in the fact that 80% of apps are created by men.
Chilcott said in an interview to Producers Guild: “I had read all the dismal statistics about the lack of women in tech and how every major tech company was creating programs for girls because the lack of diversity was a real problem, not for just diversity’s sake but in pursuit of well-rounded ideas, creativity, execution … everything really.”
The competition resulted in creating a wide variety of Apps from a social media platform that helps people safely dispose of waste to an App to an app that measures the E-Coli contamination in drinking water.
Team Pentechen from New Horizon Public School, Indiranagar, Bengaluru, won the competition in the middle school category. The team members are Navyasree B, Mahima Mehendale, Anupama N Nair, Swasthi Rao and Sanjana Vasanth.
Sellixo, the App created by them, links garbage generators to garbage collectors.
“It was an amazing experience with practical insights into the IT industry. It taught us how to be independent; it was a great exposure to IT giants like Amazon, Twitter,” Sanjana, a team member told The Times of India.