Bee Buddy – An app to save bees
San Andres Cholula, Puebla, Mexico
2024, Junior, Interactive & Multimedia
Project Description: My project is a mobile app called Bee Buddy. It’s designed to inform people, especially children, about the importance of bees. I hope it creates awareness about how climate change is affecting their livelihood. It also gives people tips on how to help bees and allows them to report a bee emergency. People can also solve a quiz on my app, so that they get the chance to learn in a fun way. My idea is that the app will keep growing and have more games in the future. The process to make this project started when I did some research and decided what type of artwork I could make. I wanted to create an app prototype on Figma because it’s easy to use and I had just learned it at school. First, I started working on the name, colors and logo of the app. I decided that Bee Buddy is a friendly and catchy name, and it also means that all of us should be kind to bees and their habitats. The app has a short intro of 4 screens. After going through the intro, people arrive to the home screen, which has 6 sections: 1. Why bees are important 2. Climate change – big crisis 3. How you can help 4. Report a bee emergency 5. Take the bee quiz 6. Be a Bee Buddy
Reflection
I was inspired to do this work when I realized that in my school we have wildflower corridors. At the time, I didn't know what they were for, so I asked my Agriculture teacher (yes, we have that subject at school!). She explained to me the importance of urban gardens and I was amazed. She also offered to take care of the garden with her for the rest of the school year. Not only did we take care of the bees with this action, but we also formed a friendship. I continued to be interested in this topic and discovered that Puebla is one of the states where more honey is produced and more ornamental flowers are grown. This production depends entirely on bees and that motivated me even more to continue working to save them. This year has been the hottest in the history of the state of Puebla. We have had extreme heat and a severe drought that we have never had before. This area normally has a lot of rain from March onwards, but now, we are in June, and we have not seen a drop of rain. This situation affects everyone very much, both people, animals and vegetation. In particular, bees are very much affected by climate change, as their habitat and food sources are destroyed. I am very concerned about this situation and would like to do more to help them. I know there are many actions to take as a community. Specifically, to take care of the bees we can plant native flowers and herbs in parks, schools, homes, work areas and public spaces. This allows bees to pollinate despite being in urban areas. Another simple action is to put water fountains or bowls in all gardens for bees to hydrate (this will also help birds). Buying local and organic food, as well as stopping the use of pesticides are other simple actions we can do to help climate change. The message I want to get across with my app is that we can all do many things to help bees. That's what being a Bee Buddy is all about. I truly believe that our generation can help mitigate climate change. It requires a lot of people working towards this goal but we can do it. I’m optimistic about it!