Five hearing-impaired secondary school girls from Abuja have won silver at the 2026 Technovation Girls World Summit in Bengaluru, India, with an app that helps girls find and request sanitary pads. The students, Adegbile Teniola Vivian, Sulaiman Maryam Adenike Isah, Moses Joy, Ukpapi Theresa Uzepi and Yusuf Ruth, attend Government Secondary School, Kuje, and they competed together as Team STRIM Girls.
Their app, Saving Pad, is powered by artificial intelligence and was built to help students, especially deaf girls and others living with disabilities, find nearby sanitary pad banks, request menstrual products and learn about menstrual health. It includes an interactive map of pad banks, a request system and a period tracker, and it also lets coordinators monitor supplies and receive alerts when stocks run low.
The team presented the app on October 8 at the Boeing India Engineering and Technology Center in Bengaluru, where 15 finalist teams from 13 countries pitched their projects to judges. The girls were one of five finalists in the Senior Division, and the division’s grand prize went to SAMRUQ.AI from Kazakhstan, a system that monitors underground mining hazards in real time.
The idea behind Saving Pad came from a simple belief that when a girl’s period starts, she should already know where to go. That is the message the girls carried to the summit, and it is why their app was designed with deaf girls and students with disabilities in mind, who often face extra barriers to getting menstrual products and information.
The team was mentored by the Technology Beyond Disability Initiative, and in partnership with the Deaf Women Aloud Initiative it has launched a pilot of the app across three special schools in Abuja, with plans to expand to primary healthcare centres and vulnerable communities across the country.
On their return to Nigeria, the girls were welcomed at the airport by Dr Adedayo Benjamins-Laniyi, the Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of the Maryam Babangida National Centre for Women Development, together with members of her management team. Their result also adds to a strong showing for Nigeria at the summit, where Team Appsolute’s AgeWell, built by four girls from Port Harcourt, reached the Beginner Division finals.
