The COVID-19 pandemic had just started and all schools were online. The students were spending a lot of their time on internet and electronic devices. Akshita got worried about the effects of Internet on students mental and physical health. She decided to do something to encourage kids to get away from devices and spend time doing some physical activities or something away from screens.
This is when in February 2020, Akshita saw a flyer that interested her so much that she decided to register for this national level competition and utilize this opportunity to do something. The challenge was to select a theme out of four choices and build something useful using computer science and technology which should be a working model or prototype. The requirement was that there should be a team of atleast two students.
Akshita discussed about the challenge with few of her friends and finally were able to convince her friend Tanu Turlapati. The team requested the organizers to allocate a mentor but after not seeing any response, Akshita requested her father to become their mentor. Manohar happily accepted the offer. Now the team was all set and ready to roll. The next challenge was to brainstorm and think of a technical solution.
The team decided to built an application where students can plan and create a physical activity and other kids can join that activity based on their interest and location. It was when the application was named GetUp. The idea was that kids are more interested to do activities together and feel more encouraged. The team learned HTML and PHP programming language to create a basic application. Here is the link to the website, if you want to play around (to login use user: testuser pass: test123): http://getup.epizy.com
The GetUp team made their way through the semi finals. Their school name appeared on the 2020 semifinalists. Here is the link: https://www.projectcsgirls.com/2020-winners
The girls loved their first encounter with computer programming but it was not the end. The competition ended but the challenge did not. Akshita decided to continue and works towards solving the bigger challenges. She formed GetUp Mission.
After few months, Shreya Shastri believed in Getup and took charge of Trainings and Bootcamps. A new journey begins.