Video: 12-year-old champion coder from Dublin overcomes bullying
Silicon Republic have released a video, made by Athena Media, of a 12-year-old Dublin girl's efforts to beat bullying.
Kathleen Marie Maughan, from Clondalkin, Co Dublin, hadn't used a computer until two years ago. And yet within that short space of time, she has managed to design an app that won her a trip to Brussels in a competition against 257 other students.
Kathleen Marie joined CoderDojo classes in the Deansrath Centre in Clondalkin when she was 10, and when she was asked by her parents if she liked it, her reply was an emphatic: "I don't want to leave here, ever."
Up to then, Kathleen Marie was being bullied because she is from the travelling community. She says: "It made me feel really sad and angry."
But instead of letting the anger take over, she used the experience positively by creating an anti-bullying quiz app - not to get recognition - but to help people in a similar situation.
She says: "The reason I made them is so the world will be safe, because the world is a big world and a dangerous world.
"All they need to learn, what the teachers tell them to learn - life. So basically, help them learn life."
You can watch Kathleen Marie's wonderful story in the film below.
