SJCK duo heading to Barcelona, Spain

Rianka Chance and Odia Charles of the St Joseph’s Convent Kingstown (SJCK) are headed to Barcelona, Spain.

The duo, calling themselves “SciGirls”, are the winners of the secondary school’s mobile application category in the 2020 National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission’s (NTRC) iCode784 competition.

Chance and Charles presented a mobile application called “ePharmacy” which allows users, including doctors and patients, to purchase medication and medical equipment without leaving their homes or offices.

“The app allows you to purchase things like IV poles, IV bags, oxygen tanks and saline and you can have it delivered, whatever you want,” explained Chance on Tuesday after winning the competition, which was held at the Methodist Church Hall, Kingstown.

Chance said that during their research, many persons said they would use an app like this because it is sometimes problematic to go out to source items of this nature.

“One doctor said that with the dengue outbreak it was very hectic for him and the office attendant so with a click of finger you would be able to get what you need,” Chance offered while adding that the app is almost functional.

“I feel really, really proud because some of the days we did not go to sleep at all and we had school in the morning.

Sometimes we had to rush to eat our lunch and sometimes we didn’t eat at all, so it’s just relieving that the trip to Barcelona is ours,” Chance said while speaking on behalf of the duo.

The duo will travel with their mentor in March 2021 to attend an event for start-ups hosted by GSMA, called 4YFN (4 Years From Now).

The 4YFN competition is the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry where thousands of investors and companies connect and launch new business ventures together.

Coming in second in this category was the Girls’ High School’s (GHS) AG Techs while third place went to the GHS’s Zen Tech.

The other competitors in this category were Innovative 4 from the Union Island Secondary School (UISS), MVAA Coders from the Mountain View Adventist Academy, NJN from the GHS and Space Tech, also from the GHS.

The winning team received $4000, the second-place team received $2000 and the team that placed third got $1500 and other prizes including soft drinks from Ju-c and cellular devices from Digicel.