Our waste management app won the Devless hackathon!

Our waste management app won the Devless hackathon!

webeditor

Oct, 13

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Devless in collaboration with Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) organized a 2-day hackathon which brought together developers, individuals, students and business professionals to brainstorm and develop creative tech solutions aimed at solving socio-economic problems. During this hackathon, we managed to come up with a web app, ‘E-co’ which seeks to promote better management of recycling of materials.

Here are some insights from members of the team:

“I had the opportunity to take part in a hackathon for the first time and to be honest it was nothing like I anticipated. We were given less than 48 hours to ideate and create. It seemed impossible at the beginning but we pulled through and emerged winners. Though we took home the first prize, I got something more valuable than the cash prize and the bragging rights. I left with a sense of fulfillment, I found out that underneath all that I am, is a girl capable of rising to the occasion and giving out her best. I think I’m ready for my next hackathon and this time I’m going to hit even harder. As a member of the team, I came up with the idea and worked on most of the front-end development of app. I also presented the demo of the app.”

~ Vanessa

 

“At the hackathon, we were taken through series of training sessions administered by experienced Developers from DevLess and Business Fellows from the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology. As a team, we came up with a web application called E-co, which is aimed at managing how people can effectively and efficiently recycle their waste products. It was quite stressful because we had less than 48 hours to develop the application. As a strategic team, every member was involved and given roles to perform. On the second day, we met very early in the morning to compile and finish up the work.  There were 9 teams in all and we were the only all-female team.   After the marks were compiled, we were judged the best team and the winner of the hackathon. We were given a cash prize, mentorship from Devless and an office space at the MEST incubator for one month.”

~ Maame

 

“I was very excited to do the back-end integration for the web-app since I had never done something like that before. As a member of the team, I was tasked to go through the Devless documentation to know how to integrate and prepare the necessary tables for data. I now believe in teamwork the more because it produces the best results if all things go well. I would love to see E-co go global. Overall, the exposure was just great. I’m a proud Developer in Vogue.”

~ Stephanie

 

This was my very first hackathon hence I was anxious and didn’t know what to expect but I was determined. On the first day of the competition, I realized most of the teams were male dominated and my team was the only all-female. It was quite exciting when guys either wanted to join our team or take a female out to join their team but we refused both offers and believed in ourselves. The two days of the hackathon were fun, exciting and educative. I learnt more on how to work in a team and have a common goal. We won because we always called on God, worked as a team and had help from our mentor. I worked on extra pages we added later and mostly pull and push activities on Git. It was fun, challenging and educative. It taught me more about teamwork and I really loved it.

~ Rebecca

 

“The hackathon was a whole new and great experience for me. I loved the fact that you get to produce something practical in a very short time that can help solve a problem.  I didn’t have a specific role but I was privileged to contribute to discussions. It was an amazing experience for me since it was the very first hackathon I had ever participated in. It was beautiful to see different people with the same passion come together to build something that will help solve a challenge in the society. The most interesting part is the fact that you had to develop something tangible within a very short time frame. Here your ability on how to work under pressure and work in a team is put to test. I had the best team ever. A group of wonderful girls who didn’t mind sacrificing their sleep to win. We had it in our minds that we were going to win and we did. One thing that helped us was strategy. The other was determination and passion for what we were doing but above all God was on our side.”

~ Anastasia

 

“I think the hackathon was a great experience. I was excited because we could do something meaningful as front-end developers since our backend was already catered for by Devless. As the team lead, I had the opportunity to present and pitch our problem, idea and solution. As front-end developers, Devless was a great tool in helping us accomplish our task during the competition. From my experience, teamwork is worth it when you have great team members. I believe that the first path to success is to believe in yourself. Once I did that, I could come out from my comfort zone to take up the bold step of presenting and excelling.”

~ Anita

 

Our choices make us who we are. We chose to be winners and at the end came out victorious. Good things come to those who wait yet still better things come to those who go out to get them. First take a bold step, then work hard to accomplish your goal. That is what we did. As upcoming female developers, we believed in ourselves and took a bold step into entering a competition we knew experts would partake in. We were determined and worked hard to achieve our vision to solve a problem which was dear to us.

 

Ghana’s growing population has over the years translated into the generation of huge amount of solid waste. With our population estimated to hit approximately 50 million people by the year 2050, the quantity of solid waste generated is also expected to increase astronomically. We the team from Developers In Vogue have also realize that such problem won’t exist as far as we exist and can find a solution to. So, we have come up with an app called E-co which is aimed at managing how people effectively and efficiently recycle their waste products. We believe that that we can help make the ‘E-cosystem’ a better place with the help of our app, E-co.

Post written by Anita Boakye-Yiadom.

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