The mood on her Twitter feed was dark and full of anxiety, so LaShawn Toyoda, 36, decided to do something about it.

“People were really upset, scared and stressed out,” she says. “With the Olympics coming up, worries about the pandemic were exacerbated by the slow rollout of the vaccine and the lack of (English-language) information about the voucher system. They had no idea when they would get one, and resources in languages other than Japanese were scarce.”

Toyoda had a new set of skills that she could apply to the problem, as she had recently learned to code.