A Real Talk on Building for Impact, derived from my experience as a Women Techmakers Ambassador and developer working on a project for social good with the Internet Society of ZImbabwe.

This session explores how low-code tools can be used to support large-scale, real-world initiatives in under-resourced settings. Drawing from her experience as a developer supporting a national gender digital inclusion study across Zimbabwe, it demonstrates how platforms like Google AppSheet and Looker Studio enabled rapid deployment of data collection and visualization tools without requiring extensive infrastructure.

The talk walks through the creation of an offline-capable mobile application used by over 20 field enumerators and the development of a real-time dashboard for visualizing regional progress, digital literacy scores, and access disparities.

Attendees will learn:

1. How to build mobile-first, offline-ready data collection tools using AppSheet

2. How to connect Google Sheets and Forms for live data syncing

3. How to use Looker Studio to design dashboards for stakeholder engagement

4. Techniques for managing user permissions and version control in low-bandwidth contexts

5. Ways to translate raw field data into insights that support policy and funding conversations

This session is aimed at developers and technologists interested in using familiar tools to drive social impact. I

Explore the article and visuals from this project on the link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-developers-shape-impact-ruvimbo-delia-hakata-x9ubf