Despite being a continually growing career field, the tech industry still has a concerning lack of girls, women, and nonbinary people. Thankfully, Girls Who Code (GWC) is combating the tech gender gap by providing free educational resources and hosting clubs for young people.
What Is Girls Who Code?
Founded by Reshma Saujani in 2012, Girls Who Code has been bridging the gender gap in technology. In 1995, women made up 37 percent of computer scientists. Over the years, the number has decreased to 24 percent. Under the current CEO, Dr. Tarika Barrett, GWC aims to address the lower number by providing free resources for people of all genders.
Today, the organization continues to break down barriers, focusing on AI and other emergent technologies. GWC launched two new AI programs and a data science course to teach young people to utilize AI for specialties like financial literacy and music production. Their goal is to reach two hundred thousand US students with their new educational resources.
GWC defines itself by its values of bravery, sisterhood, and activism. It uplifts diversity, equity, and inclusion, with 50 percent of its students coming from underrepresented groups. Alongside its mission to bridge the tech gap, GWC advocates for gender-informed legislation in state and federal government. Current statistics show that the organization has now served 670,000 girls, women, and nonbinary individuals globally.
GWC Clubs
Clubs are among several educational resources provided by Girls Who Code. GWC clubs are free for any girl or nonbinary person interested in computer science. The goal is to join a sisterhood of supportive role models and peers to further bridge the gender gap in the career field. Clubs contain a flexible curriculum that can be adapted to meet every student’s needs.
GWC partners with libraries, school districts, and thousands of other community spaces across the nation to support clubs. These clubs can occur on weekends, after school, or during the summer and may be held in person or virtually. The curriculum for grades three to five includes reading and discussing one of the organization’s books and completing guided challenges. Grades six to twelve focus on enhancing tech skills and developing community by completing coding projects.
Learn more about starting a club at your library here.
This article is published under Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International and is free to edit and use with attribution. Please cite EveryLibrary on medium.com/everylibrary.
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