KALISPELL — Code Girls United is an an after-school program in the Flathead that teaches coding and app creating skills with hands on experience.
That experience is being put to good use in Kalispell as 13 middle school and high school students in the advanced program have teamed up with the Kalispell Police Department to create a smartphone app that will help the police department in more ways than one.
“We need to have better accountability with our cars, with our maintenance, with damage that’s happening to vehicles,” said Kalispell Police Department Police Chief Jordan Venezio.
With close to 30 vehicles operated by the Kalispell Police Department, Venezio said it’s hard to keep track of vehicle availability and maintenance on a daily basis. “24/7, 365 days a year those vehicles are in use.”
Venizio found out about Code Girls United from his time working as a school resource officer, he reached out to CEO Marianne Smith on the possibility of creating an app to help streamline vehicle and equipment maintenance tracking, freeing his officers from hours of handwritten paperwork.
“It’s absolutely wonderful to have a really solid project that the girls could work on and create to have something that’s super useful to an organization,” said Code Girls United CEO Marianne Smith.
The app is still in the beginning phase but will be made available on multiple platforms once finished including Android, iPhone and personal computers.
“This technology that they’re using is technology that’s used commercially today, and this class is pretty much the same as what they would probably get in college at the second or third level so it’s not something that’s being taught at all in any Montana schools,” added Smith.
Code Girls United student Makayla Davenport said her team has been working hard on the app for the last 10 weeks.
“Just to be able to actually make an impact in our community, Code Girls has given us such an amazing opportunity to not only teach us these skills but then go ahead and put them to use, it’s really incredible,” said Davenport.
“It’s amazing, it’s a benefit that we get to see at the police department level but also the benefit of that relationship of working with them and it’s amazing what these girls can do and it’s a great program that they run here,” said Venezio.
Smith said Code Girls United hopes to have a thoroughly reviewed and refined app that can be used in the field as early as this summer, and potentially made available to every single police department across Flathead County.
“It’s a great privilege to be able to do something like this for the community, and it’s also a great learning experience for the girls to get something that’s such a real-life experience of what software companies actually do when they develop products.”
