27 February 2016, 7:25 pm – A MOBILE application that aims to educate children about child
pornography, made by five junior students from the Institute of Information and
Computing Sciences (IICS), won first place in the Department of Social Welfare
and Development’s (DSWD) first Child Online Protection Hackathon at the Bayview
Park Hotel last Feb. 17 to 19.
The winning application of Information Systems students Jose
Raphael Afable, John Joen Lim, John Robert Raphael Sevilla, Boaz Michael Sze
and Benedict Viernes under the Mobile and Web App Development category involves
interactive storytelling that focuses on teaching children what to do to avoid
becoming a victim of pornography.
The application can also determine if the user is already a
victim of child pornography with the help of a character named Katsu. Users can
talk to Katsu in a program that is almost the same as that of Simsimi, an
online application that allows users to ask questions to a cartoon chick.
The responses of users and their geo-location will be saved in a
database that can interpret and convert data into graphical charts. Through
this, agencies will be able to find areas where child pornography is rampant,
and save potential victims.
“According to one of the speakers, one of their problems is
obtaining reports directly from children. Because of this, we made an
application focused on obtaining responses from children themselves,” Lim told
the Varsitarian.
The teams from Far Eastern University Makati and Polytechnic
University of the Philippines trailed UST.
All entries in the contest will be used by DSWD and the
Inter-Agency Council Against Child Pornography in their bid to stop child
pornography. Mary Grace C. Esmaya and Maria Corazon A. Inay
