We are all crazy about computer programming in our own way. Helen could spend all day playing with CSS and HTML to make pretty webpages, appealing videos and unique icons; Lucinda loves to incorporate a lot of user interaction to write fun programs such as quizzes, slideshows, and games; and Addison is always exploring complicated databases and clever algorithms. However, most of the time our passion for coding and our innovative ideas were hindered in our classes and communities simply because being a girl, we are the minority. It sucked to feel like that we didn’t belong in the guys’ cool coding projects, that our ideas weren’t good enough, or that we couldn’t keep up with them because we are girls. It just wasn’t true.

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Luckily, Girls who Code brought us together. During those Saturday meetings, we truly bonded through our love for coding, technology, and our struggle of being a girl in tech. We shared interesting coding stories and experiences, mimicking how frustrated our face looked like when our code has gone crazy; we laughed at each other’s silly syntax mistakes after bug testing the program a thousand times; and we shared our views on fun topics like how much Siri got smarter due to artificial intelligence. One time, we discussed how much technology has changed our lives in so many aspects that we never imagined possible. The internet brought people closer to each other through fast communications and social sites; machines learned to do various tasks so we saved a lot of manpower; monitors and stations were set up on other planets to observe space. These were all things that no one thought was possible, yet they became a reality. These discussions inspired us, prompting us to think that we, as teens, could also make a difference in our communities using technology.

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After discovering the Technovation challenge in February, we knew instantly that this was what we needed all along. It is the perfect competition that puts everything that we've talked about into a reality. Technovation pushes us to constantly challenge ourselves to do more; it encourages us to think bold and to believe in ourselves; it provides us with a wonderful community full of girls like us and mentors who cared about us; and it gives us new perspectives and guidelines on how to build on our ideas make them come true. On Feburary 6th, NeoSafety was founded in San Leandro. And in the next short two months, we challenged ourselves to work harder than ever. We chose to develop our app using PhoneGap instead of MIT App inventor because we wanted our app to be accessible on all platforms with all our customized features; we stayed up doing research and getting feedback because we wanted our app to fit the needs of our users; we learned to think like entrepreneurs and worked past our differences and conflicts. There were always so much to accomplish and a lot of the times we weren’t quite sure how we were going to do it, but as we put more and more work into our project, it became clearer that the Technovation challenge has transformed us from young coding girls into strong, collaborative coders and entrepreneurs.