"I am alive."

 

Those words can mean a lot when you are a resident of Lebanon, where bombings are a frequent reality. So Sandra Hassan, a Lebanese-born graduate student studying public health in Paris, developed an app that lets users get the message out quickly. With one click, they can instantly tweet the message: "I am still alive! #Lebanon #LatestBombing."

 

She got the idea in a flash of dark humor, after hearing about a car bomb that went off in a suburb of Beirut, as she explains to NPR’s Rachel Martin in an interview.

 

"It was maybe a little bit frustrating that, we in Lebanon at least, that we’re living in a situation that makes such an application necessary or useful," Hassan says. "My way to express that frustration was to publish this app … kind of as a statement against what was happening, a statement of discontent if you will." [Link]