The g4g scholarship project in India

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At greenlight for girls, we believe that Anything Is Possible, and that every girl has the right to dream big. But there are bright girls in many parts of the world for whom accessing the possibilities that life has to offer is a challenge. College education is an expensive affair, and, for parents with monthly incomes ranging below $60, saving money for their children’s education is not an option. That’s why we created the Global Scholarship Project a few years ago, as an attempt to empower these girls by giving wings for their dreams to take off.

When we first initiated this project in 2013, we helped 8 bright girls with dreams of pursuing a career in science. Together with our network, we managed to entirely fund their college educations through the Global Scholarship Project. Today, these girls are finishing up their degree, and we now want to continue to reach even more girls!

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During the past few months in Bengaluru, India, we accepted 8 exceptionally bright girls to our g4g Scholarship programme, all curious and eager to learn, all of them coming from very low-income families and challenging backgrounds. Their wish is to go to college and become teachers, engineers, entrepreneurs, statisticians, and more.  You can help these 8 girls by providing funding for their scholarships and tuition! And now we are also thrilled to extend our project to a different region of India: Rajasthan! With our local partner on the ground, we are excited to fund a rural fellowship for 7 additional bright and motivated girls.

Meet some of our scholarship girls below!

  • 18-year-old Navya lives with her mother, who works every day but earns too small an income. Beating all odds, Navya completed her Pre-University College; When she was younger, she hesitated between joining the armed forces or becoming a doctor. She was too short for the first one, and didn’t have the financial means for the latter. Her father encouraged her to study engineering, a program she is currently following in order to help her improve the lives of others. She is fluent in English which is something she picked up on her own.

  • Kashi and Divya were both born in Bengaluru to single mothers. They live alone with their mothers, who work as well but still can’t afford to keep sending them to college. Their wish is to become lecturers. Today, they are hardworking young girls, struggling to continue their studies at the Vasavi Education Trust Bengaluru.

  • Hamsalekha and Apoorva are two step-sisters, both born in into single parent families. Their mothers are working as Coolies (unskilled laborers). Hamsalekha loves quizzes and is generally a finalist. She upcycles old denim jeans into bags, newspapers into pens and would love to start an upcycling for-profit entity. Her dream is to link design-thinking, sustainability, and fashion, to become a design entrepreneur. Apoorva loves numbers, business, and accounting: she would like to keep studying commerce.

  • Roopa is an orphan, born in Tumkur. She has been staying at an orphanage for the past 8 years and now dreams of studying commerce and management.

  • Jyothi was born in Siddapur, Karnataka to a single mother. She is fluent in Sanskrit (one of the world's oldest languages) and so passionate about this language that she would love to promote it further. She also speaks Kannada (the language spoken in the state of Karnataka, where Bengaluru is the State capital), and loves history. She comes from a family of teachers and wants to take forward that legacy so she can help other girls and boys, to have access to an education and a brighter future.

  • Finally, Laxmi studies in class 11 in the Arts stream. Her favorite subject is economics though she does not feel very well versed in political science. She is from Tumkur, loves street food, and spent 5 years at the Dwarka centre of Nele. She hasn’t completely decided on her future yet, but for now, she wants to study more to become a teacher.

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After a few years of college, these girls would in turn become “change agents” and make a difference as future mothers and leaders thereby touching and influencing many more lives. It's the "Chain of Change". This chain would not just stop with these 15 girls, as they will have the opportunity to influence many more lives… And you can be a part of it too!

With your help, Anything is Possible!

2380 girls reached in December 2019 !

After the crazy months of Fall, we had no other choice than to go even more crazy in December, to finish the year with a BANG. And that’s exactly what we did!

We started the month in Mexico, with more than 130 girls attending our 2-day g4g Day @Mexico “Goo extravaganza”, which involved polymer chemistry, sustainability, and more with Covestro. We then concluded our #STEM4Girls Festival in India with Covestro, with an event in Cuddalore and a week of events in Mumbai, involving more than 1200 girls (pfiou!). Mid-December, we headed to our neighbor country Luxembourg, for a new event with Amazon involving 50 girls, app-creating and race cars. Finally, on December 14th, we did something we never did before … Because of our global partner, Cisco, we were able to realise a g4g day in Andalucia in 8 cities at the same time, reaching 1000 girls in the region!

Read all about it below! 

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On December 3rd and 4th, our g4g Days @Mexico with Covestro, gathered more than 130 amazing and motivated girls! They were all coming from 6 different schools around the Santa Clara plant neighborhoods, with very limited resources and in risk of social exclusion. Our goal? Show them that Anything Is Possible and that girls and STEM make a great combination. Over two days, these girls explored everything linked to Polymer Chemistry, from slime to polymer worms, we can say we had fun with goo! We also learnt about electrical engineering when generating electricity from fruits, and enjoyed a wonderful thinking and writing session about sustainability (see those beautiful planes? That’s how we travelled during our Sustainable Trip around tomorrow’s world!). A massive thanks to our global partner, Covestro, the 30 volunteers who dedicated their day(s!) to teach the girls all the fun in science, as well as to the Covestro team in Mexico for being such wonderful role models to the girls!

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If you remember well, in November, we had started the month launching our third #STEM4Girls Festival in India with Covestro, the ChandraMohan Foundation, the Nehru Science Centre and the ARCH Foundation. After amazing events in Noida, Dharampur and Ankleshwar in November, on December 5th, we were very excited to host this STEM festival in the city of Cuddalore for the first time ever. Together with our partners, we hosted hands-on workshops for more than 200 girls and their 20 teachers; what a day! Thank you all for coming and attending, we can't wait for the next events!

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On December 13th, we had invited 50 girls from across Luxembourg to join our g4g Day with Amazon, to discover science and technology subjects in fun and inspiring ways, and connect to role-model leaders. The guest speakers of the day, Maria Ciolpan, Head of International Campaigns, Amazon Web Services, and Helder Velho, Director of Amazon Transportation Services, first welcomed the girls with engaging and inspiring speeches on how to fail fast and also look ahead at what innovation in sustainability could look like in their transportation sector. After customising their own labcoats, the girls then broke out into small groups to explore four hands-on workshops; coding while programming DeepRacer cars to drive around a physical car track with obstacles, creating their own mobile application with AppLab, discovering how sustainability plays a role in Amazon while calculating their own carbon emissions, and finally, exploring with chemistry by making their very own “polymer worms”. Thank you so much to the 25+ volunteers who dedicated their day, and a particular thanks to Herminie and Thomas for a wonderful collaboration!

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Between December 9th and 14th, we had our last stop of our annual #STEM4Girls Festival, organized in India with our global partner Covestro, as well as the Chandra Mohan foundation, the Nehru Science Center and the Arch foundation. Over the course of six days, in Mumbai, we hosted hands-on workshops for more than 1000 girls from 20 different schools. What an experience! Thank you so much to all of them for coming … and thank you to the wonderful scientists who came to inspire them over these past few days! Dr Manasi Rajadhyaksha, Dr Kamakshi Bhate, Dr Nishigandha Naik, Acharya Donde Marg, Dr Sunali Khanna, Dr. Vidita Vaidya, Prof. Shubha Tole… Dearest India, we cannot wait for next year (and dear readers, come back in January to read our annual recap about this year’s festival!).

Finally, on December 14th, we did something we had never done before: 1 g4g Day in 8 cities at the same time! When our global partner, Cisco, approached us with this crazy idea a few weeks ago, we loved it immediately; reaching out to 1000 girls in 8 cities of the beautiful Andalucía? Tell us no more, we are in! So, on December 14, we hosted events in Almeria, Cordoba, Huelva, Granada, Jaen, Malaga, Cádiz and Sevilla… Through amazing and interactive workshops, girls discovered everything there is to know about the Internet, routers, 3D technology, coding and programming or even IoT. Thank you so much to all the volunteers and partners who made this day possible, and a special thanks to David, Magdalena and Irene for carrying this amazing project in Spain!

Check out some of our photos below!

 And that’s how we concluded December and 2019! In January, we will regroup and plan ahead for an exciting 2020... Meanwhile, we leave you with this fun and cute video showing some of our favorite moments from 2019!

From all of us at greenlight for girls, we wish you a very happy end of the year and a marvelous 2020!

Kick-off of our #STEM4Girls Festival in India, new g4g Days and more than 3000 girls met in November!

After two intense months for g4g, November was no different! From India to China, from Nanjing to Brussels, we were so thrilled to host so many events and meet so many wonderful g4g girls. How many do you wonder? 3,250…. Yep, you read that right… in November, we met more than 3000 g4g girls! How? We kicked-off our third #STEM4Girls Festival in India with Covestro, we hosted our first g4g Days at Antwerp (Belgium) and Nanjing (China) with Nokia, we attended fun events in the Community with Stanley Black & decker and the US Embassy in Brussels, and of course, we finished the month with a BANG while hosting our 10th g4g Day @Brussels!

Read all about it below!

In November, we started the months by kicking-off our third #STEM4Girls Festival in India, with Covestro, ChandraMohan Foundation, the Nehru Science Centre and the ARCH Foundation. Last year’s festival involved 3000 girls, 6 cities, workshops in 5 languages… This year? Let’s see!

On November 6th, we kicked-off our Festival in Noida with more than 800 girls joining us from 10 different schools over the course of three days! Together, we explored with polymer chemistry and putty, we had fun with biology while extracting our own DNA, and we learned about electricity and circuits with LED activities.

 

 On November 9th, we were thrilled to be back for our annual g4g in the community in Towson, USA with Stanley Black & Decker. For the third annual SBD's International Girls Day event, we had the chance to meeting employee children for a morning of STEM discovery. Our most popular activity? Robots, of course!

 

 

On November 14th was the second stop of our  #STEM4Girls Festival 2019 in India with Covestro. This time, we headed to Dharampur for three days of science fun! During these three days of STEM Festival, we were joined by 30 schools, more than 1000 schoolgirls and their 65 teachers. What a beautiful experience…! In addition to interacting with STEM and fun workshops, girls were also inspired by wonderful guest speakers. The words we will remember are the ones of Dr Krishna Rajput, a Zoology professor who opened her session saying - "I don't need a mic. Girls' voices can reach wherever it must". What a powerful statement for social change! "

 

On November 16th, we were very excited to host our first g4g Day @Nanjing, China, with our global partner Nokia. What a day! For this STEMtastic experience, we had invited 90 girls aged 11-15 from the local community to join us and were helped by 40 wonderful and dedicated volunteers. After an inspirational speech by Zhang Zhimin, the TC head of Nokia Nanjing, we dived into robotics with bristlebots, engineering with spaghetti towers, physics with chocolate, electrical engineering with fruits… We also had a special tour of the Nokia inventions and enjoyed getting to know the Nokia professionals better thanks to a career workshop.

 

Between November 18th and 21st, we hosted the third step in our #STEM4Girls Festival in India with Covestro and went to Ankleshwar in the state of Gujarat. During these four days of STEM Festival, we were joined by 15 schools, more than 800 schoolgirls and their 25 teachers. Wow! The girls had the opportunity to meet with inspiring role models, particularly from the Indian Space Research Organization (thank you so much to Hetal Pandiya, Dhruvi Bharwaad!) and the Education system (thank you Shehnaz Sheikh!), and experience fun and hands-on STEM workshops.

 

On November 20th, we had the great opportunity to co-organize a fun event with the US Embassy in Brussels. For one afternoon, we had invited 30 girls and women for an Inspiring Talk and Interactive Session with US Entrepreneur, Ashley M. Williams, CEO of the company RIZZARR. After an interview with Ashley, and a few questions from the audience, we had created a fun exercise for the girls, to develop their own inventive ideas for the future. Let's remember Ashley's beautiful words: "Whatever dreams you have, believe in them and in yourself"

 

Between November 21st and 22nd, our g4g Days @Antwerp with Nokia, gathered more than 200 girls from the local community. Our goal ? Show them that Anything Is Possible, and that girls and STEM make a great combination! From coding to statistics with chocolate, from discovering the cutting-edge technology Nokia is known for, to playing with green screens, these girls experienced fun interactive workshops while meeting STEM professionals and enjoying mentoring sessions with them.

 

Finally, on November 30th, we were thrilled to be back at the International School of Brussels for our 10th g4g Day @Brussels… 10 years! Joined by 300 girls aged 7 to 15, we had an amazing time together, exploring STEM in every aspect possible. We explored engineering, building towers with crazy materials, we baked cupcakes using polymer chemistry, we learnt about maths & stats thanks to M&M’s and Twister games, we built robots, we experienced with our senses and the chemistry behind it, we dived into snaptricity, and we met amazing and inspiring scientists like Grace Hopper, Hedy Lamarr, Maria Telkes or Stephanie Kwolek in our Passport to Invention activity. What a day!! This couldn’t have been possible without our partners and sponsors of the day, thank you so much to Stanley Black & Decker, Covestro and P&G. Thanks also to the amazing 70 volunteers who came and helped us bring to the girls such a fascinating day! Finally, thank you to our amazing photographer of the day Kaori, for capturing such beautiful smiles! … Dearest Brussels, we can’t wait for next year!

 

 And that’s a wrap! November was incredibly exciting and fun, and December promises to be not anything less than amazing! In December, join us for 5 events, including our first g4g Day @Luxembourg with Amazon, a multi-city g4g Day @Andalusia (1 g4g Day = 8 cities = 1000 girls!), and of course, the Grand Finale of our #STEM4Girls Festival in India with a 6 day event in Mumbai!

October at g4g : From the oldest pyramids of Cairo to the artificial archipelagos in Dubai, from racing circuits in the UK to Hollywood stars!

With 5 events in 5 countries, you thought we had a busy September? That was nothing compared to the 11 (!) events we hosted in 9 different countries in October!

In October, we launched our first g4g Days in Canada, Egypt and the UAE, we showed girls the link between sport and science in Ireland, we met with amazing inventors and inspiring race pilots in the UK, we became engineers in France, we invaded the European Parliament in Belgium and we celebrated Halloween in the US… all of that to deliver g4g STEM fun to thousands of girls and boys! During our October g4g Days, we met with over 700 girls and boys… and that’s not it! We also talked at a STEM conference in Spain and hosted STEM workshops at an interactive festival in the USA, where we met with … more than 14,000 kids!

Ready to read all about it? Keep scrolling!

We started the month in Canada, when, on October 3rd, we hosted our first g4g Day @Ottawa with our global partner Nokia! 200 girls joined us, and together, we explored plasma physics with plasma balls (“We only see those in movies, that’s so cool!”), we discovered electrical engineering with snapcircuit and that was so powerful that… we got two flying saucers on the ceiling(!), we explored with maths, physics and yummy food when we calculated the speed of light with chocolate and a microwave (did you know that if you could travel at the speed of light, you’d be able to go around the Earth seven and a half times in a single second... ? Believe us, we are trying! In a nutshell, we had a g4g blast!

Only a day after, we were thrilled to be back to Ireland for our third g4g Day @Dublin with our global partner AIG! Helped by 20 wonderful and dedicated volunteers, and with the amazing support of some players and coach from the Gaelic Athletic Associations (GAA), we hosted a full day of STEM fun at the AIG offices in Dublin! We had invited 80 young curious and excited girls to join us, and together, after getting inspired thanks to Louise Kidd, David Leo, and Declan O’Rourke, from AIG Ireland, we discovered all the science hidden in GAA sports (hello gaelic football and camogie!), we experienced chemistry with bath-bombs and polymer worms, we dived into electrical engineering with bristlebots, we became codebreakers and had fun with statistics using M&M's.

On October 8, we were so happy to be back for the third year in a row at the European Parliament in Brussels, for this 2019 edition of the Generation Code with Public Libraries 2030 . We had invited 20 girls to join us, and together, after a welcoming and inspiring speech from MEPs Sean Kelly and Julie Ward and a tour of the European Parliament, we dived into some fun activities involving VR, robots and coding! We learnt how to code with the European Schoolnet we applied problem solving thinking to robots to help them find their way throughout mazes, we built bristlebots and we went on an adventure, from the outer space to all the way below the sea thanks to Virtual Reality!

 On October 11, we felt honored to be asked to give a keynote speech at the beginning of the STEAM-B Learning Conference, at the Aloha Collage in Marbella, Spain. 400 kids from late primary school to high school joined us, and after an energetic plenary, we had fun with statistics and M&M’s when we taught a Mathematics workshop.

On October 14 and 15 we were absolutely thrilled to come to Egypt for our first ever g4g Days @Cairo with our global partner Nokia. 130 girls joined us and together, we dived into bio-chemistry, robotics, electrical engineering and plasma physics. We have heard so many "wow", so many "C'est fou" so many " رائعة حقا " that we can't count them all... ! We were absolutely thrilled to meet all of these amazing girls and had so much fun with them... that we can't wait to be back! Thank you to all the dedicated volunteers who made these couple of days possible, as well as to Radwa Hafez and Heba Marawan for all their amazing work and inspiring words.

On Friday October 18, we were back for our third Design Hackathon in London, with our global partner AIG, along with 50 girls! After a great speech by Romane O’Malley, we started the day by exploring the amazing work of eight female inventors. What an inspiring morning! The girls then worked as groups to come up with innovative solutions helping others. After building their prototypes, they presented their inventions to our judges of the day, Noona Barlow, Melissa Rancourt and Nick Insley. Bravo to all these curious and inventive girls, we were all inspired by the amazing inventions you came up with, from the Petbot to the noise cancelling headphones, to the alarm clock that wakes you up with compliments, we loved them all!

Between November 22nd and 24th, we headed to the Interactive STEM Festival” Youth Mobile” (YoMo) in Los Angeles. What an adventure! Over the course of three days, we welcomed over 14,000 students and educators, and met with almost 1000 professionals and exhibitors. At our booth, kids could grab their “passport to invention”, and explore the amazing work of 8 inventors. From Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of the bullet-proof fabric Kevlar, to Maria Telkes, the Sun Queen, we took the kids with us on a journey and explored innovations in Solar Energy, Materials, Telecommunications and Artificial Intelligence. We led short activities (10 minutes top!) to show them how these amazing inventions came to life, and how we use them every day. During the YoMo festival, we were also incredibly fortunate to meet with so many other exhibitors, from the L.A area or elsewhere. We were thrilled to join this wonderful Festival and the great news is … it’s only the beginning since we will be at the YoMo Festival in February in Barcelona! Stay tuned!

On October 24th we had a blast together with 30 girls and boys for our first g4g @work in Dardilly, with our global partner Stanley Black and Decker! After customizing their labcoats, the kids received a warm welcome from two SBD professionals: Claudie Delorme and Yves Antier from SBD. We then dived into electronics when we built our own circuits, explored electrical engineering and mechatronics while designing our own scribblebots, and got caught into biology and chemistry by making our own bath bombs. In the afternoon, the kids had the opportunity to explore the SBD activities in France while visiting the SBD warehouse and learning about how alarm systems work during a smoke generator demonstration (it got so foggy in the room that we couldn't see each other!). In a nutshell, we had much fun with science!

On October 29, we headed to the UAE with our global partner Covestro for our first g4g Day @Dubai! We were thrilled to host our first event there, and even more to be joined by these wonderful 100 curious and enthusiastic girls. After being inspired by our guest speakers of the day, Mohamud Kasil Ali, Senior Covestro Representative of the Middle East, Melissa Rancourt, g4g Founder and Chairman, and Marwan Abdulaziz Janahi, Managing Director of Dubai Science Park, the girls got to explore with hands-on workshops showing all the fun in STEM! Together, we dived into polymer chemistry thanks to an incredible fun wormy workshop developed by Covestro, and we explored with robotics, biology, chromatography with some of our signature workshops (hello bristlebots, bath bombs and DNA extraction)!

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On October 30, fifty young girls aged 11 to 15 were invited to Silverstone, UK, for our first g4g Day @Silverstone UTC, organized with Stanley Black & Decker and Envision Virgin Racing. After inspiring meetings with women role models, girls took part in hands-on workshops exploring subjects such as chemistry, robotics and welding with chocolate! Finally, everyone also enjoyed an exciting visit to the Envision Virgin Racing Formula E Garage, where girls experienced ‘a day in the life of racing’ and discovered how technicians and engineers work behind the scenes with Stanley Black & Decker tools to maintain the team’s leading position in the Formula E Championship! What an exciting day!

 

 

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Finally, on October 31, we were thrilled to host our 6th "Trick or Treat for STEM", at Circleville (USA) Elementary School, with 62 fourth grade students, 3 classroom teachers, and support faculty/staff. There was even a special appearance by Obi Wan Kenobi… Can you spot him on our pictures?! The kids (and adults!) enjoyed three STEMtastic and sugar-loaded activities: candy corn catapults, candy elevators, and Starburst rock cycles. Halloween has never been so fun!

Pfew, what a month! We were thrilled to be invited in so many amazing places, to meet so many wonderful partners and volunteers, to have fun with STEM with so many curious and enthusiastic girls… and November promises to be equally fun! In November, we are kicking-off our #STEM4Girls Festival in India with Covestro, we are having 3 g4g Days with Nokia, 1 with Stanley Black & Decker, and … we are hosting our tenth g4g Day @Brussels! Stay tuned!

5 events in 5 countries with 500 girls... That's our g4g September!

This month, we flew to India, Poland and Sweden, drove to Belgium and the US, we packed cars and suitcases with robotics kits, voltmeters, and test tubes, and we bought enough corn starch for a life supply (or, at least, until October hits). We hosted our signature interactive workshops and were thrilled to see our partners developing new ones: From crafting water cleaning systems from scratch to show what engineering is about, to experiencing with cybersecurity, coding and VR in new and innovative ways, our wonderful partners really outdone themselves! Finally, we were so luck to meet these 500 girls who were all curious, enthusiastic, inspiring, and who were not scared to dream big: “Later, I want to be … a doctor, a professor, an engineer, a g4g events organizer” (ok, we might have pushed a bit for the last one!)…

Ready to read all about it? Keep scrolling!

 

On September 7, 2019, we packed our bags, our DNA extraction kits, our voltmeters and our bath-bombs molds, and we flew to India for our second g4g Day @Bengaluru with Nokia. 150 young girls from the local community came to the impressive Nokia facilities for a full day of science fun! After an inspiring speech by Soma Sarkar, Head of Technology Center at Nokia Bengaluru, girls headed out to a full day of interactive and fun STEM workshops. They explored design engineering while making bristlebots, chemistry while crafting bath bombs, we challenged ourselves thanks to fun STEM quizzes, became true codebreakers, learned about biochemistry while extracting our own DNA, and we explored all the magic that is happening at nokia thanks to a great interactive visit of the Lab, where girls experienced with VR, ... and we all had such a blast! The event concluded with an interesting talk on importance of Science & Math by the Highest Innovation Patent holder in Nokia Bangalore, Nagendra Bykampadi, followed with a closing talk by members of our organizing team, Vinayak Ba- Head of Location Office Nokia Bangalore & Aparna Sethu – Tribe Quality Owner. A major thanks to the wonderful volunteers and teams who joined us today and who organized this event with us, and without whom it couldn't have been possible (particularly Aparna, Rupa, Benedicta and Vinayak!). And a massive thanks to the girls and teachers for coming on this day, we felt lucky to meet you and inspired by your dreams. Bengaluru, we can't wait to be back!

 On September 14, we were thrilled to host our second g4g @work in Tessenderlo, Belgium, with Stanley Black & Decker! Helped by more than 20 amazing dedicated volunteers, we hosted a day of STEM fun and discoveries at their fascinating warehouse. 50 girls and boys from the local communities joined us, and together, we dived into chemistry, engineering design, and STEM, and had fun using the SBD tools. Curious for a sneak peek @ workshops? We were Geocaching in the warehouse, putting on our measuring hats to find hidden materials, while trolley racing against centrifugal powers, we gathered and balanced key materials till the finish line (and we explored hidden clues in the box tower, with endoscope cameras!), we got ‘egg-cited’ about engineering in the egg drop challenge – sending our designs to ‘lift off’ for the 8m test with the HILOP, and we got fizzing to discover the beauty of science, making our own bath bombs & lip balm ! A big big thanks to the whole team at Tessenderlo and to all the kids for joining us on this exciting day, and a special bravo to Indra, who led her first g4g Day on her own!

 On September 21st, and along with 10 partners, we hosted our 5th g4g Day @Krakow with Cisco and partners at the Cisco offices in Krakow. 150 young and amazing girls joined us and dived into cybersecurity, programming, chemistry, robotics, engineering, coding, and so much more! It was also a wonderful opportunity for us to meet with some committed and enthusiastic greenlight for girls ambassadors: Two of them joined us for the event and hosted their own workshops! Thaisa showed the girls all the beauty of science by playing with chemistry and bath bombs, and Maja presented the girls with an eco-friendly workshop, where girls made their own paint using food coloring, yoghurt, flour and toothpaste.  A massive thanks to all the partners involved (Cisco, Aon, Relativity, Nokia, General Electric, Aptiv, ABB, Jacobs, Sabre and IG), and a special thanks to the Cisco team in Kraków for a wonderful event!

Have a look at some of our photos below!

 
 

 

On September 25, we headed to New Britain, USA, for a very special event with Stanley Black & Decker, their Women’s Network and their Leadership program. 60 girls joined us for a fun evening dedicated to science fun and mentorship. Assisted by the 150 young wonderful and energetic leaders from the SBD program, the girls experienced the “Stanley x Science Funlab”, including lots of different activities. In addition to our g4g bristlebot, codebreakers and polymer worms workshops, girls got to build with SBD tools, relay style, have fun with some crazy Fast Math Tricks, and became creative innovators!

It was a full evening of fun, inspiring activities and conversations as every girl went through workshops and activities with her very own SBD mentor. The night was full of laughs, labcoat signing and customizing, engineering with SBD tools and of course some added chemistry, robotics and coding in the mix! This unique event allowed for every girl to make a personal connection with a young professional in all different fields. The girls left inspired and we were inspired by them… Thank you so much to all the great young leaders who joined us, as well as to the terrific SBD team who organized this event with us!

Have a look at some of our photos below

 
 

 

Finally, on September 26, we headed to Sweden, for our first ever g4g @work in Gothenburg, with Stanley Black & Decker. Helped by 10+ amazing dedicated volunteers, we had invited 40 young girls to join us. Using the SBD tools, these girls built bird houses for their friendly neighborhood birds, learnt all about polymer chemistry, saw how we can sweeten math with chocolate, and discovered all the fun behind clue hunting with endoscope cameras and lasers and more.

We will absolutely remember this day for all the inspiring women we discovered in the mystery cube - from Astrid Lindgren, to Malala, Greta Thunberg, all the way to Beyonce! A massive thanks to all the volunteers who came to help us and all the incredible STEM role models of the day, as well as the SBD Gothenburg team for a great event!

You think we were busy in September? That was nothing compared to the 11 events and 800 girls waiting for us in October! We’re very excited to embark on a new month full of fun and hands-on discovery.

And let us finish on a sheering note… GO LUCY! For her birthday in October, our very own HQ Admin Manager, the amazing Lucy, is going to run during two whole weeks in Kenya, where she was born. We are all with her (in spirit, in our pj’s on our couch) !

See you in a month dear g4g readers!

Thaisa, our September g4g girl

Me at g4g Day @Andover in 2018, my first g4g event in the USA

Me at g4g Day @Andover in 2018, my first g4g event in the USA

Hi, my name is Thaisa Brandao and I have been a g4g Ambassador for 2 years now. All this story started in Brazil when I was in my last year of college. In 2015, I was always involved in different things: lab tutoring, Math tutoring, Junior entrepreneur, college’s handball team, projects, monography, volunteer… and that’s how the g4g came to my life.

I heard for the first time about g4g when I was at a meeting of the “Coletivo Mulheres em Movimento” (Women in Movement) - a feminist club from my college where the students talk and discuss about women’s right, including girls in STEM. They are the ones who told me about “Inclusao das Mulheres nas Ciencias e Tecnologia – IMCT” (Inclusion of the Women in STEM). It is a University Extension Program Project led by the teacher Kelly Torres, who is an inspiration for me and became a real friend of mine, at the Federal University of Sao Joao del Rei, Campus Alto Paraopeba, in Ouro Branco, Minas Gerais, Brazil. This is the University where I graduated in Bioprocess Engineering and my home city.

IMCT Extension Project at Levindo Costa Carvalho State School, Ouro Branco Minas Gerais, Brazil, 2016.

IMCT Extension Project at Levindo Costa Carvalho State School, Ouro Branco Minas Gerais, Brazil, 2016.

The IMCT Extension Project is connected to g4g and seeks to encourage, supports and informs girls from public and private schools to pursue a career in Mathematics, Science, Technology and Engineering, especially where they are minorities. Its goal is engaging the students in a fun and dynamic experience with workshops, lectures and experiments around STEM. In January of 2016 I became a volunteer in the IMCT Extension Project, where I planned events and did some volunteering work with the IMCT at the schools in my city.

Meeting Melissa and Alex, g4g Day Andover, 2018.

Meeting Melissa and Alex, g4g Day Andover, 2018.

A bit later on, I started an exchange program in the USA. After 6 months in the U.S I decided to see if I could come back to what I loved the most while I was in college. I looked at the g4g website and that’s when I found something about being a g4g ambassador!  I applied for it, waited…and a year later, when the Ambassador program got a second breathe, I was officially a g4g ambassador! That day my exchange program started to make sense for me. Since, I started to volunteer at some g4g events around the U.S.

Quickly, I realized I was able to lead a proper g4g workshop on my own (the DNA necklace one!). To get ready for it, I had even followed a Molecular Biology Course online to improve my vocabulary to be more able to connect to the girls in English.

 
 

g4g has changed my life in so many ways that a few months ago, I started to get ready to visit the g4g team in Brussels, Belgium. It has been an amazing experience so far: Since September, I have been working and travelling around the world with g4g, attending lots of events and running lots of STEM workshops as an ambassador and Intern ; I went to two events in Belgium, one in Poland, one in Sweden, and am ready to go to Ireland, England and France in the upcoming weeks!

Encouraging girls to pursue STEM is a way for me to pursue my dreams and learn more and more. This experience has proven me that I am resilient and really love working with kids and science (both at the same time if possible!), in so many places… That’s why I love g4g! And of course… Anything is possible!