Diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as a baby, 8-year-old Granada Hills Charter School student Mia Destiny Barakat has spent her childhood being conscious of the nutritional value of different foods as she and her family have managed her diet over the years.
Now, she’s gathered her knowledge of healthy eating into an app that teaches kids how to create healthy meals and snacks.
A few months into the pandemic, Mia’s mother, Pakinam Fawal, enrolled her in virtual coding classes at BYJU’S Future School, an online learning platform that teaches math, coding, music, arts and film via one-on-one instruction. With some previous coding learning, Mia was able to dive into this more customized curriculum and further develop ongoing creative projects. In addition to making the app look visually appealing, she created a quiz to test kids’ knowledge about healthy foods. She named the app Eat Wise Challenge because “kids don’t like quizzes or tests, but if you say ‘challenge,’ it’s more interesting and fun for kids to learn.”
After two months of writing the code, she entered a global coding competition, the Silicon Valley Challenge, and won. Now, her app is available on Google Play.
