City teen inspires girls to code for change

As a 10-year-old, Tanya Elizabeth Ken loved video games. As she learned to play more games, she grew interested in learning to hack, and knew she wanted to be a cyber-security architect.

“I started learning to code from class 8 and was introduced to the Technovation challenge. When I was trying to look for challenges that I could address through the app I had to create for the competition, I realised that even though I knew what I wanted to do in my career, my schooling wasn’t helping me learn that. I understood the gaps in our education system — that it isn’t connected to our end goals — and wanted to address the issue through my app, LakshyaShala. Through the platform, I began working with other students, particularly from underserved communities, realise their dreams and have the resources to make them come true,” recalls Tanya, who is now 16, studying in class 11 in the city.

As a founder of LakshyaShala, Tanya emerged as a finalist in Junior Division at the Technovation World Pitch Summit held at the Google headquarters in California, US, in 2017. She stood as one of the top contenders at the annual international challenge for young girls to create technology solutions for social problems they faced. Over the past two years since her presentation at the global platform, she has been working with three NGOs in Chennai with 700 children from underprivileged backgrounds in helping them develop their skills, talents and connect with teacher and mentors with expertise in different fields.

She became the student ambassador for Technovation during 2018-19, and made ‘Equality in Education’ her mission.

Tanya’s story of attempting to find a purpose for education does not end with her success, but has underprivileged girls from the city, who were inspired to code by learning from her, also winning at the same global platform. A team of three young girls from the city — Stella Arokiasamy (14), Ishwarya Kanagaraj (12) and Akshara Vasanth (11) — mentored by Tanya herself, a few days ago won gold medal at this year’s edition of Technovation. To ensure diversity in the teams representing, Tanya had Akshara, from a private city school, working along with Stella and Ishwarya, from underserved communities. Their app Baton, which helps social work interns use technology to update the progress of their grassroots work to help maintain continuity when another intern takes over, so as to result in an impact, won $12,000 at the competition held on the Oracle campus at Santa Clara in the US.

“It was such a joyful moment to see them win at the same competition that I had taken part in. The prize money will be used for the education of the girls. These girls were facing an issue and wanted to solve that through technology. The competition has exposed us to tech ideas from around the world. It is important for everyone to learn to code, especially for girls, so as to be able to bring the change we want to see in our society. We must have more women in technology,” Tanya asserts.

While she helps other students chase their dreams, Tanya is keen to pursue computer science ahead and become a cyber-security expert. “I’m still looking for a mentor for myself to understand how I can get there,” she remarks.