Meet Fiyin
Fiyin is a 13-year-old girl who coded an app that successfully combines two of her passions: poetry and technology.
Fiyin learned about Technovation through her dad Tony, a Customer Engineer for Google. Tony joined Technovation for a session during the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference, where he hosted a coding tutorial on Google’s DialogFlow. After learning about Technovation Girls, Tony thought that an introductory coding program might interest Fiyin. He connected Fiyin—and her grandma!—to the Grandmother’s Coding Club. The Grandmother’s Coding Club is a side-project of Technovation’s founder and CEO Tara Chklovski. The club’s goal is to create a place for girls and grandparents to connect and solve today’s pressing issues with technology.
When Fiyin and her grandma were thinking of a problem to solve, Fiyin recalled how she initially felt hesitant to share her poetry with others. Fiyin’s fear became her motivation to code her app Poetry Slam—an app that makes it easier for aspiring artists to share their art. At the end of Fiyin’s Technovation experience, she told us “I’ve grown as a coder and a person in general. I’m so grateful for this opportunity”
When Technovation was planning our event to announce our partnership with the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs, we knew we wanted to include Fiyin’s creative perspective. The event announced Technovation and UNOOSA’s initiative to empower girls to use space data to solve climate change. We invited Fiyin to write a poem about her take on climate change and to present it during the event. Her work blew us away. Fiyin’s poem reminds us that kindness is the root from which we all grow. We’re also grateful to Fiyin for sharing her story with us and for reminding us of the many ways art and technology intersect. Watch Fiyin reading her poem “Building Block” below:
Building Blocks
By Fiyinfoluwa O.
If every good deed in your life
Everything you’ve done or said
Were worth a single dollar bill
Or more to the well-bred
How much money would you have?
How rich do you think you’d be?
Could you buy yourself a mansion?
Or an island in the sea?
Or would you find yourself lucky
To be treated to something nice
Like an apple or a brick
Or a wool hat without lice
‘Cuz when you really sit and think
About all the good you’ve done
Would you really deserve a prize?
Should a prize there be to be won?
“To be kind” is such a general rule
With a meaning that’s not-so-clear
And many have found it hard
A monster they must fear
So instead of asking you to be nice
And kind to all you see
I’ll ask you now to work hard and fast
Take notes or plant a tree
For the only way that you can help
Convince the world to change
Is not found in any inspirational speech
Or anyplace as strange
Forgive me for being cheesy now,
Just a little bit cliché
But there’s something small I’d like to impart
A little I’d like to say
Every time you meet a person
Every word you say in pitch
Can build them up or knock them down
The question, though, is which?
To hear from more inspiring girls like Fiyin, join us at our annual World Summit celebration on August 12-13, 2021!