Created on WhiteHat Jr platform, Distress Buddy App aims to encourage children to speak up when faced with inappropriate behavior or stressful situations
Children go through emotional, mental, and physical changes as they grow up and are faced with anxiety and stress on a daily basis. However, most of them are not able to express themselves clearly which takes a toll on their health. To tackle this situation, 9-year-old Madhav Agnihotri from Delhi has created the Distress Buddy App, which helps kids to connect with professionals to get required assistance to overcome anxious situations.
It is difficult for parents to understand their child’s mood swings and they often end up scolding their kids in such situations. The child in turn is not able to express his emotions properly, and this leads to anxiety and depression. Madhav saw his sister go through stressful situations because of higher studies. While learning coding on the WhiteHat Jr platform, Madhav thought of utilising his learning to create an app to help his sister and other children seek professional counselling and relieve themselves from such stressful scenarios. Once logged in, the app provides stress-relieving exercises, quizzes, and motivational quotes to boost the morale and helps the kid to relax. The app also has professional psychologists’ details, along with other important help-line numbers, which can be utilised by both the kids and their parents whenever required.
“In today’s time, kids are very aware of societal issues and want to contribute in their own way to address them. Teaching kids to code not only provides a well-structured way to introduce them to rational thinking and problem-solving skills, but also improves their logical and analytical thinking, and increases creativity and concentration. Kids as young as 6-year-old can start to learn coding to prepare them for the future. We are witnessing many young kids like Madhav creating some extremely creative, high utility digital applications that will make a lasting impact on the world.”, said Karan Bajaj, Founder and CEO, WhiteHat Jr.
Another example is of 10-year-old Agastya Singh Yadav from Delhi, who created Pet A Pet app, which allows pet owners to connect with the right foster homes to take care of their pets when they are travelling. Finding a loving and caring foster home for pets can be tough, and Agastya faced similar issues whenever he had to travel. He created the app where users can connect with the right foster families for their pets, without being worried about it during their vacation.
9-year-old Vihaan Khera from Delhi loves reading but buying new books all the time was a pain point for him. So, with the help of WhiteHat Jr., he created the Book Barter app which allows users to exchange books, instead of selling it to a second-hand book seller. Users can upload information like review and picture of the books they would like to trade with others and communicate with the owner over email for the exchange.
All these kids are learning to code on WhiteHat Jr, an EdTech startup that teaches coding to kids between 6 to 14 years of age. Teaching cutting-edge curriculum on technologies like AI, robotics, machine learning and space tech, the startup aims to harness natural creativity of kids and shift their mindset from being consumers to creators at an early age. After seeing great success for its online platform, the company is working to bring its AI and robotics coding curriculum to schools across the country.
It has started a program where top 1% of kids on the platform will have a chance to get an all-expense paid trip along with one of their parents to Silicon Valley in the USA to be mentored by top entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. They are also soon starting a 15 under 15 fellowship wherein White Hat Jr will help the top 15 kids on the platform incubate their own startups and provide a $15000 fellowship to them.
