(Photo Handout from TREE Facebook page)
By Nada Deyaa’
In a room filled with computers, laptops and whiteboards, a group of university students sit down giving their full attention to their work, as they create mobile applications.
TREE was founded in 2012 as the first student programme at Cairo University to teach students how to create and develop android mobile applications. The student’s have launched two mobile applications in the first year and launched three more applications this year.
A team from TREE has helped a team of students create FamSpot, Reco, and Outs, the three android applications which will soon be launched on app market Google Play.
“The ideas target youth as they are mainly smartphones users,” said Kareem Amr, one of the trainers.
One of the applications, FamSpot, helps talented young people find fame, he said. It aims at helping talented people to market their talents through posting them to the internet.
Reco, another of the apps created by the students, helps users fight boredom by providing recommendations of the best places to go, new songs to listen to, and games to play. The application also helps users to access cinema listings.
The third application, Outs, guides users to find places to go to, according to their budget.
The three applications are the outcome of a long process of training and work. TREE organises workshops, which are held for eight weeks, targeting students from several Egyptian universities.
Participants, who are expected to have basic knowledge of creating mobile applications, are divided into two teams. The User Interface team is responsible for designing the shape of the application, with the Application Development team working on coding the applications in JAVA, a programming language.
The experience helps students improve their abilities using android, an open source operating system whose editing and programming is relatively easy.
With the aim of helping others learn and develop, five fresh university graduates founded TREE. The founders work to have a strong competitive Egyptian participation in the android market.
The name of “TREE” came from the belief that everyone has a treasure inside which just needs to be discovered, said Mohamad Ragab, a student at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology and one of the founders.
“We believe that inside every one there is a seed that can be developed to get a TREE,” he said. “Our mission in life is to teach what we never found someone to help us learn.
