Undercovered: Young Women Learn to Code Their Way Out of the Slums

Undercovered is our daily feature bringing attention to women’s issues worldwide, which we feel deserve a larger audience.

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Girls and young women in Dharavi, Mumbai are learning to code and developing mobile apps to address issues in their community, including sanitation, potable water, and sexual assault, according to The Guardian.

“No one thought schoolgirls from Mumbai’s Dharavi slum could code mobile apps. The girls didn’t even know what an app was until recently,” Vidhi Doshi writes.

[F]or the past few months, 67 girls have been taking coding lessons at the weekends with a local non-profit, the Slum Innovation Project.

“We learned it so quickly,” says Roshani Shaikh, 14. “Because we’re girls, our parents didn’t want us to do all this in the beginning. They’d say, ‘You need to help with the housework, what will you do with computers?’ Now they say we’ve made them proud, that we’ve made the whole community proud.”

Sapna Helagi, 15, adds: “When I first came here, I couldn’t even use the mouse. I would type only two or three words in one minute. Now, see how fast I am typing.”

You can read the complete report here.

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[photo: Dharavi Diary/Facebook]

Undercovered is a daily feature from Mediaite, bringing attention to stories about women’s issues that warrant more attention. Go through the Undercovered archives here. If you have an idea or a tip, please email us at Undercovered@mediaite.com

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