Google HQs. Photo/nation.co.ke
Five Kenyan schoolgirls discuss their upcoming trip to California where they hope to win $15,000 for I-cut, an app to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). This was done at the tech giant Google's offices in Nairobi.The five teenagers, aged 15 to 17, are the only Africans selected to take part in this year's international Technovation competition, where girls develop mobile apps to end problems in their communities."FGM is a big problem affecting girls worldwide and it is a problem we want to solve," Stacy Owino told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, before flying to the United States on Aug 6."This whole experience will change our lives. Whether we win or not, our perspective of the world and the possibilities it has will change for the better."The intelligent girls from Kenya's western city of Kisumu call themselves the 'Restorers' because they want to "restore hope to hopeless girls", said Synthia Otieno, one of the team.Even though the girls' Luo community does not practice FGM, they have friends who have been cut."We were very close but after she was cut she never came back to school," said Purity Achieng, describing a classmate who underwent FGM. "She was among the smartest girls I knew."I-cut connects girls at risk of FGM with rescue centres and gives legal and medical help to those who have been cut.