App of the Week – Life Pocket

Inspiration is a powerful force. Understanding a problem and how it impacts you and those you love is even more inspirational. One teenager from Kenya possessed this inpiration and understanding and used it to make a change in the world. That is why Life Pocket is the App of the Week.

The Kenyan teenager we speak of is Caroline Wambui. Wambui was deeply affected by the loss of her uncle to kidney failure. No one in Carolines’s family was a match for a donation. There is also a cultural taboo against organ donation in Kenya. The country, like so many other African nations, does not have a national organ donor program.

Caroline Wambui with smartphone

Kenyan’s and other Africans die needlessly because of the lack or a donor database. Many others are forced into extremely dangerous organ markets.

But fortunately Kenya has a robust technology program that is bringing technology education to schools. The Kenyan government has instituted a laptops for schools policy. Contributions from numerous multi-nationals and local startups are working to improve Kenya’s educational system by introducing technology.

Caroline, because of this effort, used her education in technology to find a solution to the problem that led to her uncle’s death. It took two years but this young lady created the app Life Pocket.

The Life Pocket app registers and links patients with organ donors, doctors and hospitals for the purpose of making life saving organ donations possible.

Damaris and Caroline working on the app in a computer lab at the Embakasi Girls School.  (Photo by Guillaume Bonn/ Getty Images Assignment for intel)

Life Pocket  was just a dream until Damaris Mutati, Caroline’s teacher at the Embakasi Girls Secondary School became involved. Mutati introduced technology to her students. She understands that technology education is vital to the young people of the African continent.

Caroline enlisted the help of her fellow students to develop Life Pocket. Mutati demonstrated a burning passion for tech education. She participated in two programs run by U.S. chipmaker Intel in Kenya. Intel’s programs, Teach, and She Will Connect, assisted teachers seeking to introduce IT knowledge to African children.

But Intel did not stop there. The company’s staff volunteered to teach a coding workshop at Caroline’s school introducing the students to Intel XDK a unified development environment that enabled the students to design, create, test and deploy HTML5 apps.

Because of the efforts of Mutati and the involvement of multi-national corporations like Intel technology education has taken hold in Kenya and across Africa. One student, Caroline Wambui, has already changed the world because of it.