Two students from St Patrick’s Comprehensive in Shannon, Co. Clare, presented Care – a mobile app designed to keep volunteers and the elderly people they visit easily connected – at the Technovation Ireland Regional Pitch Event (RPE) at AMD CityWest Dublin.
The app was developed by Ruby McCormack and Saoirse Ryan-Friel over three months through the Teen-Turn afterschool programme.
Care was inspired by the ALONE programme, an Irish charity that pairs volunteers with older people living on their own.
“Saoirse’s mom is a volunteer with ALONE, and the lady she visits couldn’t get her toaster working. She was very upset, and as visits only happen at certain times, we thought an app like this would really benefit someone needing immediate help,” said Ruby.
Care is built to make staying in touch effortless: it lets a volunteer and the person they visit reach each other directly through the app, with calling features designed to be easy to use on both sides.
To shape the app, Ruby and Saoirse ran a survey of 79 respondents to understand how widely the ALONE programme is recognised in their community. The results surprised them – the vast majority had never heard of someone involved in the programme, while almost everyone agreed loneliness in older people is a real and pressing problem. The findings reinforced their feeling that better tools for connection are badly needed.
The girls met regularly through Teen-Turn’s weekly programme and their school’s Girls in STEM club, and also took part in Teen-Turn’s in-person Super Sessions, which bring participants from across Ireland together with mentors from industry and academia. “We helped each other and really enjoyed working together. Our weekly STEM club and the Super Sessions were excellent while we were working on our project,” they said.
This was the second year Ruby and Saoirse have taken part in Teen-Turn activities at their school, and their mentor Jacquie Murphy saw the difference. “The girls worked really well as a team and showed great initiative throughout the 12 weeks – it was an absolute pleasure to see them grow, both in their tech skills and in how they communicated with each other and the wider group.”
Teen-Turn, an Irish charity, has been the regional ambassador for Technovation in Ireland for the past nine years, supporting teenage girls to gain hands-on experience in technology. Each project builds a functioning mobile app to address a real-world problem the participants see in their own communities. This year, 67 projects from 9 counties and more than 25 schools were submitted to Technovation from Ireland.
Technovation is a tech education nonprofit that inspires people around the world to believe in themselves as leaders and become more confident, curious problem-solvers. Technovation offers interactive learning programs in which young people ages 8-18 and adults in their community learn how to use technology to solve real-world problems. Technovation partners with leading organisations like UNESCO and UN Women, and with mentors from companies like Google, NVIDIA, and Adobe to reach children and families in more than 100 countries. To learn more, visit technovation.org.
Teen-Turn is an Irish non-profit organisation that provides teen girls, particularly those from underserved communities, the opportunity to gain hands-on STEM experience and the support to acquire qualifications and jobs. More information on their activities and the support they provide to girls is available at www.teen-turn.com.