THE IDEA THAT STARTED WITH FEAR

At just 16 years old, Bohlale Mphahlele was already thinking about a problem that many adults struggled to solve.

She was a Grade 11 student at S.J. van der Merwe Technical High School in Limpopo, South Africa.

Like many young people, she watched the news.

But the stories she saw were difficult to ignore.

Women and children were becoming victims of violence, abuse, trafficking, and other crimes. For Bohlale, these weren’t simply headlines that disappeared from the television screen.

They made her think.

She began asking herself a simple question:

What if someone in danger could call for help without having to reach for a phone?

A phone could be difficult to unlock.

A person being attacked might not have time to make a call.

And in some situations, even reaching into a pocket could alert an attacker that the victim was trying to get help.

Bohlale wanted something much more discreet.

Something small.

Something that could be worn every day.

And eventually, she came up with an unusual idea.

An earring.

But this would not be an ordinary piece of jewelry.

Hidden inside the tiny device would be technology designed to help someone in an emergency.

Her invention became known as the Alerting Earpiece.

The concept was surprisingly simple.

The device was designed to allow the wearer to discreetly trigger an alert and capture an image of an attacker. The image could then be sent to devices paired with the earpiece.

Instead of creating something large and obvious, Bohlale wanted the technology to disappear into something ordinary.

Something that wouldn’t immediately attract attention.

Something that could sit on someone’s ear and look like jewelry.

But turning that idea into a working prototype[BE LIKE] would be another challenge entirely.

And Bohlale was about to find out just how difficult it was to turn an idea in a young student’s mind into real technology.