 We're here at ITU Telecom World 2015 in Budapest, Hungary, and I'm very pleased to be joined by Vanessa Mutesi, who won the second annual Miss Geek Prize at a contest sponsored by the Rwandan government to spur girls' involvement in ICTs. Vanessa, welcome to the studio. Thank you. Now, I'd like to talk to you about this Miss Geek Prize. I mean, it's a funny name, but it sounds like a very worthy prize. So please tell us a little bit about Miss Geek 2015, and essentially how it felt to win the award and what it means. Well, Miss Geek was started by Girls in ICT, which is an organisation started by Girls in ICT in Rwanda, and it's there to encourage girls to follow careers in sciences and technology. This year was actually quite challenging because I was going against very, very intelligent girls, and it was overall a great experience, not only meeting people who trained us to do our public speaking correctly, but as well as having a platform for us to show our ideas, because a lot of countries you go to, there's like very little women involvement in ICT, so I wanted to show that girls can do have a voice in that area. When I won the award, it was a bit nerve-wracking presenting to a room full of people is never easy, and being the youngest contestant that they've had is even more pressure because I was going against girls who are either in college or they're last year of high school. Because you're only 15, is that right? Yes, recently 16 actually. Okay, happy birthday, your recent birthday. So that's great. So you were up against much older girls than you and you still won with us. That's brilliant. So tell us a little bit about the idea that won the prize. I believe it's called Rwanda Online Open School. What does this solution do and what are the benefits of people? So Rwanda Online Open School was inspired by children in Rwanda because some schools, in lower income schools, they don't have enough resources and this hinders the children's education. So what Rwanda Online Open School will focus on is having a platform where they have all their textbooks, the school curriculum, school calendar, everything on a server so that no one has to either borrow a textbook or wait for someone to finish using the textbook, but you have your own access to this. Children will be able to interact across the country because obviously your teachers are not always going to be there so you have to use the people around you, your peers, to solve solutions to come up with answers to your problems. So I want to also impact students to have that proactive manner inside of them whereby they don't have to wait for someone to do something for them, but also what they can do for themselves. One of the biggest benefits in using Rwanda Online Open School is that children will be able to be proactive in their education. They don't have to wait for the teacher to do something for them, but they can also do for the teacher something for the school and give back, but as well as promote parental involvement in the children's academic lives because sometimes parents aren't able to follow what their children are doing in school, so the children can use that as an excuse to lag behind in school or they can just leave it alone and just give up on school itself. So we want to promote that parental involvement in the children's life because when you have your parents involved in your academic life to encourage you or to push you because I know my mother pushes me a lot to do better, it will help you. It does even though it's sometimes tough love, it does help you to get farther, so help teachers communicate with parents, tell you if your child's doing well, if your child's not doing well, or if there are any community events that they can get involved in so that they can do as much as a community. And you mentioned your mother, I'm wondering if there were any role models, if there are any particular people that influenced you and that encouraged you or spurs you on to have an interest in ICTs? Yes, my sister, her name is Lucy, she is a big geek and she's actually proud of it. So she's been one of my biggest motivations because she has always been pushed by her own inspiration to be one of the women in Ronda who spurs on women in ICT. But as always my mother because she's a very strong woman I find and she's always inspired me to do better and to go above what I can do and always know that where I've come from and how I can also help my people get to where I am or even farther. Is Rwanda a nurturing environment for young people in ICTs? Yes, definitely because as technology is growing a lot in Ronda and you find a lot of people, social media is a big buzz in Ronda and there's a lot of young people and I feel like they treat us at a very high level of respect because they see that we are the future of tomorrow whereby they take in our ideas, they think about it, they help you, they nurture your ideas, they guide you so I feel like they're doing a very wonderful job overall of making sure that we have the best that we can get so that we can also give back to our country what it's given to us. Now I don't know about your geographical travels but I presume this is your first time in Budapest, is that right, in Hungary and your first time in the ITU telecom world I would imagine too, so I just wanted to find out what have been your impressions of this event? This event has been a wonderful event and I feel like I'm very blessed to be here because I've met a lot of people, it's not so often that you can enter a space where there's a bunch of countries all together coming from different places in the world, Azerbaijan, India, all in one place. It's not often that you get to have such interactions especially when you come from East Africa and you meet people who are from India, it's obvious that you can't meet them as frequently so it has been a good networking platform but as well as it's a good experience looking at what different people do, looking at how we can help each other coming from different places of the world just because you're far away doesn't mean I can't help you or you can't help me. Well Vanessa that's great thank you so much for joining us in this studio today, it's been really good and I really wish you all the best with your future career, it sounds like you've got a very promising one so well done, thank you.