Campbell 10-Year-Old Creates Award-Winning Storytelling App

CAMPBELL, CA — A Campbell fourth grader won the Silicon Valley Challenge through creating an app that facilitates community building and storytelling.

Hari Gangadharan, a 10-year-old who attends 4th grade at the Ocean Grove Charter School, has been taking coding lessons since 1st grade. During the pandemic, he began taking one-on-one virtual coding classes with BYJU’s FutureSchool, and became aware of the organization’s Silicon Valley Challenge, which asks students to identify a real-world problem that can be solved through technology.

As a booklover who grew up hearing stories within his nuclear and extended family, Hari decided to devote his efforts to creating an easy-to-use community platform to encourage kids, friends, and families to create stories and share them with the community, especially during a time when “the pandemic isolated a number of us, making us more distant from each other.”

From March to July 2021, Hari worked on an app called MUNI (short for “community”,) an app where, “one user starts a story, another continues from where it was left. The chain continues infinitely hand in hand with creative imaginative thoughts.” The app offers a number of story genres, including children’s literature, comedy, fantasy, poetry, drama, realism, and romance.

“Thanks to the Silicon Valley Challenge competition, I was inspired to create a special online experience that will bring our thoughts, dreams, and inspirations together!” Hari said in a video presented to judges. “MUNI, short for ‘community,’ is a way that you can inspire and contribute to the stories of your community. My vision is that we all come to MUNI with creativity and imagination, and leave with hope, encouragement, and positive connections. Stories are the oldest form of human connection.”

The app is now available on Google Play. Hari has also completed a second app called PLAYDAY, which helps parents gather kids together for virtual, in-person, or hybrid play or study dates.

“I want to be a software engineer with a heart full of empathy,” Hari said. “I not only want to create something extraordinary that will help this world, but also share my knowledge and understanding with the underprivileged to bridge the technological gap in this world.”