Meet GES Delegate: Sana Hawasly
Name: Sana Hawasly
Twitter handle: @Daratycom
Country of Origin: Syria
Organization Name: Daraty
Organization Website: www.daraty.com
Brief Description of Organization:
Daraty means ‘my circuit’ in Arabic. The hardware fun-packed kit comes with a mobile application that uses friendly content with animated tutorials to help users understand and learn. The app tracks circuit building progress, detects circuit errors and explains how to fix them. Our kit is designed to be child-friendly and extensible. It’s upgradable to support new circuit elements and new languages, with our current focus being on Arabic.
What inspired you to start this organization?
The Daraty team believes it’s very important to make it easy for children to learn electronics at an early age. It doesn’t just provide the basic blocks for young learners to better understand circuits and computers, but also helps them improve their problem-solving skills and prepares them to be active in a world where technology is everywhere. Alhasan Muhammad Ali and I have been teaching Arduino and electronics to children in Syria for four years now and during that time we’ve been constantly looking for ways to make the experience more friendly and entertaining.
What is the next big step you hope to help your organization reach?
Daraty is working hard to deliver the minimum viable product in July 2016 and start a production line and pilot Daraty in schools and child organizations.
We are working on making partnerships with educational institutions as we keep delivering courses in electronics for kids in schools and organizations.
What has been your biggest obstacle as an entrepreneur?
Building a new educational technology from scratch with very limited support was one of the biggest challenges we had to overcome. In addition, the ongoing conflict in Syria has significantly slowed the growth of our startup not only by having rationed access to power and internet but also by limiting our chances for taking part in various events outside of the country due to political strife.
What advice would you give other emerging entrepreneurs?
Don’t get discouraged. Reach out to other tech startups and learn from their experience. Ask for support from research centers and tech incubators. Remember that is the internet is a great resource and technology is more democratic than ever, don’t be afraid to start!
