Inspiration
Working with the charity Lotus Petal Foundation for 5 years, I've been involved in the field of international educational charity work for a long time. Upon doing some research, I found a major void for students in Africa who don't have the resources to learn English and French, the language taught in school. Seeing this void, I was inspired to devise a solution.
What it does
In Africa, children grow up learning Wolof which is their native tongue. However, Wolof doesn’t have a written form, so school content is taught in English and French. But, unlike in the US were we have so many books and interactive games to learn English, these students have nothing. They face so many hardships when trying to keep up with their school content which is taught in a content they don't understand. Thus, I built Wolof World— an app dedicated to teaching these students (who do have tablet and WiFi access at their schools) English and French from their native Wolof language. The app uses Wolof audio of each word that teachers in Africa can upload (I currently have placeholder audio since I haven't reached out to any teachers), as well as the English and French audio and text.
How we built it
The app was built in ReactNative, and the data is stored in an AWS server.
Challenges we ran into
The main challenge for me was connecting the app to the database, as well as connecting the audio to buttons on the app.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I'm definitely proud of the product I was able to put forward, especially the database aspect since I have very limited experience with the backed.
What we learned
I learned that if I pushed myself (I had to code for hours on end), I can accomplish so much. I also gained valuable experience with the more complex functions of ReactNative and learned much more about the backend than I came into the hackathon with.
What's next for Wolof World
I realized that Wolof World can actually be deployed in Africa. My next step would be reaching out to school administrators and using the prize money I win from GAPE Hacks to help fund this project.
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