A group of students at Royal West Academy have created an app with one goal in mind: to get the city to clean up.
Trashbag is their brainchild, an app that tackles trash in the city and took six months and countless hours to develop.
“You are walking around and you see all this garbage and it’s disgusting, so we wanted to find something that could help the problem,” said Trashbag CEO Sofia Del Raso.
The students entered a regional competition as well as an international one called Technovation. The goal is to encourage and inspire young women from 10 to 18-years-old to get into the field of I.T.
They learned how to code, prototype that code, and they also learned how to write a business plan.
Trashbag has a number of features, but the one they are hoping will be the most effective is the photo option. If someone spots trash on the ground they can snap a picture that will be posted to Twitter, will tag the city and includes a hashtag. They hope it will force the city to be proactive about garbage around Montreal.
The students worked alone but had an associate producer from Ubisoft, Ambre Lizurey, as a mentor.
Lizurey says it’s important for her and her company to invest time with young girls.
“To make sure that early enough we include girls and we show them that it's not complicated, that it's not a boys club, it's for everyone,” she said.
If they’re selected to make their pitch to venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley, the big prize could be money for a startup.
Teams will be pitching their app in front of a jury on May 9. Register for the free event here.
