Limerick student wins Communicator Award at Technovation Ireland for healthy eating app

LILY Smite, a student from Thomond College in Limerick, won the Communicator Award at the Technovation Ireland Regional Pitch Event (RPE) at AMD CityWest Dublin for DOVElopment – a mobile app designed to help users get more plant diversity into their diet.

DOVElopment was inspired by a gap Lily noticed in everyday nutrition advice — most people don’t know they should be eating a wide variety of plants each week, not just enough of them.

“Most people haven’t heard of the rule of 30 plants a week. The only rules they know about are ‘5-a-day’ and ‘eat the rainbow’ – but if you had a banana, an apple, lettuce, red bell pepper and an orange every day, you’d be fulfilling both of those rules and still only have five different plants in your week,” said Lily.

The app is built around scientist Tim Spector’s recommendation to eat at least 30 different plants a week – including fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, spices, legumes and whole grains – to support gut health and long-term wellbeing.

DOVElopment combines a daily plant checklist, a pop-up recommendation that encourages users to try something new, and a recipe video section where users can watch, favourite and post their own ideas. When Lily tested the app with users, they told her the video section was their favourite part – and the feature that set DOVElopment apart from other nutrition apps they had seen.

Lily worked on the project through Teen-Turn’s weekly online sessions.

“Lily was such an active participant in our online sessions, and you could really see how hard she worked on her project week to week. It’s been great to watch her app go from an idea on day one to the finished project she pitched in Dublin. Teen-Turn’s online sessions are such an incredible resource for girls, whether they are working from home or joining from their after-school sessions, giving them the opportunity to connect with mentors, industry volunteers and academic staff who support and inspire them throughout the programme,” said Iseult Mangan, Regional Manager at Teen-Turn.

Teen-Turn, an Irish charity, has been the regional ambassador for Technovation in Ireland for the past nine years, supporting teenage girls to gain hands-on experience in technology. Each project builds a functioning mobile app to address a real-world problem the participants see in their own communities. This year, 67 projects from nine counties and more than 25 schools were submitted to Technovation from Ireland.

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