Thirteen-year-old Niamh Scanlon from Dublin was named co-recipient of the EU digital girl of the year prize at the Ada Awards in Luxembourg yesterday.
This is the second year in a row that an Irish girl has been named digital girl of the year – last year’s title was won by Lauren Boyle, founder of the website Cool Kids Studio.
Niamh has mentored at CoderDojo in DCU, where she helps other young people – particularly girls – learn about technology and is a member of the Digital Youth Council in Ireland.
When she was 11-years-old Niamh built an app Recharge my eCar for which she has won awards from Coolest Projects and an eir Junior Spider. The app is designed to help the drivers of electric cars to find available charge points.
“I’m really honoured to be named as an EU digital girl of the year,” Niamh said. “Coding is a skill that I think all young people should get a chance to learn, because it means you can not only use technology, you can create things with it too. Young people, teenagers and younger, around Europe and around the world are already learning to create and solve problems with coding, and it is going to be amazing to see what they do in the future with these skills.”
The 2015 European Ada Awards, an initiative of the Brussels-based Digital Leadership Institute (DLI), celebrated top girls and women in technology as part of the Luxembourg presidency of the Council of the European Union in three categories: digital woman, digital impact organisation, and digital girl of the year.
Niamh was this year’s joint winner with alongside Yasmin Bey, a 14-year-old from England, who runs a programming club during at her school and specialises in projects using the Raspberry Pi single-board computer.
“The goal of the Ada Awards is to drive a step-change in attitudes about girls and women as digital leaders,” said Cheryl Miller, DLI founder. “Targeted action to engage girls and women in digital leadership is not a luxury but an economic necessity demanding urgent action by Europe’s leaders.”
The Janneke Niessen, COO & co-founder of Improve Digital, and VHTO – both from the Netherlands – were named digital woman of the year and digital impact organisation of the year respectively.
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