Community Story Diverse Youth

Irioluwa The highlight for me, was meeting like so many different people. It was just such a thrill. We got called on to that stage for like, the judges’ best project.

Inioluwa Coolest Projects for me is a tech showcase. It's for young people to showcase their ideas, to showcase their talents and their gifts. It builds your confidence. It builds your self-esteem. You just feel so encouraged to keep going.

Michelle My name is Michelle and I'm 15.

Inioluwa My name is Ini and I'm 18.

Jedidiah My name is Jedidiah and I'm 14.

Irioluwa My name is Iri and I'm 11.

Inioluwa It was my sister, actually, that really inspired this project, because she would tell me in her school at the time that you run out of period products very frequently. So not a lot of girls could access it. Flow Buddy is our website, and we made it because we wanted to tackle the issue of period poverty in the UK. The idea behind it was basically to connect young women to period charities in the UK that provide period products, and also we wanted to have an information-based website as well, so young women can go there and access information about periods, puberty and, like, everything in between.

Michelle Another thing was when we're learning about our periods, we didn't learn about health issues when it comes to those. I had to go online and research and like I found out like 1 in 10 people in like the whole UK have like PCOS or endometriosis and don't even know.

Inioluwa The tech behind it, I used a software called Visual Studio Code and a lot of HTML, primarily Javascripts,to make the website more interactive. And I also used a lot of CSS to-to design the website. These two are mainly my… my article writers and my researchers.

Jedidiah Alongside Michelle, I researched, like, the diseases and what could come from period poverty and how different people get by with the lack of period products around.

Inioluwa There's so many beautiful things that come out of Coolest Projects. You make friendships for life. You make teams for life. It's not really much of rivalry. We all support each other. We all want each other to do really, really well.

Jedidiah Do it.

Inioluwa Do it. Don't be afraid. Even if tech is not your thing. You learn so much, you grow so much and it's very fun. It is. It really is.