Nigerian Girls Win 2015 Technovation World Pitch Competition

Team Charis from Nigeria came up first place in the High School Division of the 2015 Technovation World Pitch Competition which held in San Fransisco, USA. Out of nearly 400 apps submitted for the 2015 Technovation World Pitch Competition from 28 countries, the top ten apps/finalists came out from five countries: Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria and the USA. On the 24th of June, the teams pitched their apps to top tech professionals and a panel of judges from Yahoo, Yelp, Google, Hackbright Academy and the SaleForce.com Foundation. Team Charis from Nigeria won the High School Division of the World Pitch Competition with their mobile app idea, Discardious Discardious is a mobile app that tackles the problem of improper waste disposal. It is an android application that enables communities to discard their waste effectively and at a low cost.  It will serve as an avenue where people can lay complaints and get solutions concerning waste. Team Charis of Nigeria are a team of four exceptionally clever girls: Praise David-Oku, Sonam Kumar, Nmesoma Ogbonna and Grace Akpoiroro.  The girls said that the competition totally changed their views of technology and that now they believe that they are not too young to start achieving their goals. In addition to being first place, Team Charis (Winner, High School Division) and Pentechan, India (Winner, Middle School Division) were awarded $10,000 to develop their app and bring it to the market. The girls see this as the beginning of something big. They plan to empower young girls to participate in the next Technovation competition. They also plan to launch their app and work on their project of solving waste challenges in Nigeria.