Girls Teaching Girls to Code & International Women's Day

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by Heidi Chao210 views·Updated Mar 11, 2020
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At Girls Teaching Girls to Code, we love creating fun experiences to inspire high school girls to pursue futures in Computer Science and Engineering. ​Through our annual Code Camp, hands-on workshops, and other special events, you'll get to learn coding foundations, build exciting projects, and form lasting bonds with relatable peers and college mentors in the field. Visit our website - https://www.girlsteachinggirlstocode.org/ Like our Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/girlsteachinggirlstocode/ Join our mailing list - http://eepurl.com/guFWRL

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated

  1. Hi, everyone.
  2. My name's Heidi and I'm here representing a whole bunch
  3. of amazing woman behind girls teaching girls the code, and
  4. we just wanted to wish you a happy International Women's
  5. Day. So first I wanted to tell you a little
  6. bit about myself.
  7. I grew up in the Bay Area, where we are
  8. obviously no strangers to tech, and I was also fortunate
  9. enough to attend a high school that offered computer science
  10. classes. But even with all of that set up for
  11. me, I always steered clear of the subject.
  12. Looking back now, I think it's obvious that I had
  13. all these stereotypes in my head of who and engineer
  14. is and what an engineer looks like, and I just
  15. didn't identify with that picture at all.
  16. But eventually I did make my way into the subject
  17. and ended up studying computer science for both my undergraduate
  18. and graduate degrees.
  19. Um, along the way, I met so many other girls
  20. who had shared a very similar story.
  21. So Girl Season Girls, the code was built on this
  22. concept that if we take high school girls and connect
  23. them to really relatable college H mentors, who can teach
  24. them some coding basics.
  25. Uh, then maybe we can change that picture that some
  26. of them having their heads of who and engineer is.
  27. And maybe they'll feel inspired to pursue set stem subjects.
  28. Over the last seven years, we have brought over 2000
  29. girls into the world of computer science, and we're very
  30. proud of that.
  31. I want to tell you about one girl in particular.
  32. Her name is Caroline.
  33. She's at the bottom of this picture here.
  34. Ah, we met a couple of years ago, and she
  35. told me that she had attended code camp when she
  36. was in high school, and she admitted that she wasn't
  37. particularly interested in the subject at the time.
  38. But something moved her that day because she ended up
  39. graduating high school and attending Stanford, where she joined girls
  40. teaching girls to code and ended up leading the organization
  41. on teaching a whole bunch of other girls.
  42. Uh, her story is really special to us because it
  43. was the first time that we saw we were able
  44. to inspire just one person to pursue something that they
  45. wouldn't have otherwise thought to pursue.
  46. And by the way, now she's personally her master's in
  47. computer science at Stanford.
  48. But it turns out that Carolina was not the only
  49. one, uh, that we were.
  50. We just started meeting more and more of these girls
  51. that we called full circle girls.
  52. So they attended co camp when they were in high
  53. school, ended up going to college and pursuing computer science
  54. and teaching more high school girls through girls teaching girls
  55. to code.
  56. Um, in fact, we got together a whole group of
  57. these full circle girls to launch our UC Berkeley chapter
  58. last year.
  59. And in just a short time, they were able thio
  60. pull off three different events and reach almost 100 girls,
  61. which is pretty incredible.
  62. So, uh, in light of International Women's Day, we wanted
  63. to pose a challenge to all of you.
  64. Um, we really believe that if we're able to teach
  65. and inspire just a few girls to pursue computer science
  66. and engineering, uh, they would then be able to go
  67. and teach and inspire a few more girls who, with
  68. Auntie gin, inspire a few more girls, and then we
  69. would really have a movement.
  70. So the challenge is to think of one or two
  71. girls that you can reach out to today and inspire.
  72. And then together we might be able to actually empower
  73. an entire generation.
  74. Thank you guys for listening to this message and again.
  75. Happy International Women's Day from all of us at girls
  76. teaching girls to code Bye.