Kenyan teens make app to help solve female genital mutilation – It’s time to update certain traditions!
“Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a big problem affecting girls worldwide and it is a problem we want to solve,” Stacy Owino, one of the app’s creators, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
One step forward in the right direction. Certain traditions don’t serve us anymore and the disharmony they are bringing with them have influences on millions of people. One example of this is FGM and it has be performed on 200 million woman globally. Luckily with the digitization of the world, we can create more effective tools, to take a shot at ending these practices or at least minimizing their negative impacts.
I-cut is an app developed by five teenage girls from Kenya, which provides girls with easy access to legal and medical assistance before and after FGM. It was a finalist in the 2017 Technovation Challenge aimed at fostering more women in tech. They called their team “The Restorers” (only ones from Africa).
For those who don’t know what this is…it’s a non-medical procedure that involves the total or partial removal of a woman’s external genitalia. It is illegal in Kenya, but it’s because of its cultural significance as a rite of passage and prerequisite for marriage, it is still being practiced.
The app is here to help girls to alert authorities before it is to late, so they wouldn’t have to undergo the procedure. Sadly that is not always the case and for those, who survived this horrific act, there are also contacts to rescue shelters with a touch of a button.
“help,” “rescue,” “report,” “information on FGM,” and “donate and feedback.” They made the app simple and efficient! One in four Kenyan woman seems to have undergone FGM. They are less likely to finish school, get a job and have major complications with their health.
We are in 2020 now and the hype of their app has dwindled in the media and judging by their downloads in the app store it was not a success, but I still hope that they saved at least a few girl from their destiny. But these 5 girls are definitely Examples of Harmony!
It is time to rethink harmful traditional practices!