5,000+ Participants Inspired in 2020, and even more STEM Learning in 2021!

After a special broadcast where some of our g4g Ambassadors from around the world met with the CEO of Solvay, Dr. Ilham Kadri, she shared how moving the experience was for her: "Thank you so much for the wonderful exchange! Loved the conversation with the girls, listening to their stories of passion and dedication in STEM. My advice? Dream big, look for your sponsor and never give up!" And we couldn’t agree more! We love that inspiration is infectious. It reminds girls and adults alike to be imaginative, take on challenges with resilience, and to not be afraid to play LOUDLY and often.

As we enter into a brand new year, we can't help but reflect on all the inspiring and new ways we innovated in the last 12 months. And what a year we had! We hosted our first events online, gathering attendees and role model speakers from across the globe, and we launched some incredible educational STEM kits. We introduced virtual STEM challenges, led a virtual career hackathon, and recorded nine experiment videos. We are even getting started on our first virtual and cross-continental after-school program. We couldn't have done so without all our wonderful donors whose generosity continues to fuel us. 

We were especially thrilled to have been chosen as one of GlobalGiving's Projects of the Month in November, giving us a chance to encourage even more support from the community! We are so proud to have had 20+ events with over 5,000 participants and 4,500 volunteers engaged around the world... and this is all during a crazy pandemic year.

With that in mind, we invite you to take a peek at some of our favourite moments:

• Working with the US Embassy in Belgium to host the first-of-its-kind cross-cultural and virtual programme: The g4g Great Passport to STEM Challenge! 100 girls across Belgium and the US will be kicking off our program in February!

• Engaging more than 2,000 Solvay Employees in 10 languages to help them create educational STEM learning resource for kids around the world during their Citizen Day initiative. Check out the amazing results in the Future Innovator's Library.

• Partnering with CDK Global to host a 7-week g4g STEM Challenge Program this past summer for 65 interns at their company. The challenge? Bringing the STEM expertise of CDK to life for kids around the world!

• Bringing career skills to life in our first AIG and g4g Career Hackathon for students across the UK to see how STEM links to risk, budgeting, work culture, diversity, communication, and more! With AIG alone, we’ve had the great chance to bring forward more than 50 professional role models in their company to inspire girls in these months.

• Developing our first STEM kit in partnership with CDK Global and Project Helping which demonstrated solar power charging. Over 2,500 boxes were sent to adults and over 2,500 girls and boys received them! Check out all the details in our press release!

• Creating and producing episodes of our g4g broadcast series: Science, you had me at hello.® Ingenuity, innovation, creativity, resilience, exploration, dynamic, agility, purpose, inclusion, and more! All of the learnings from these episodes are available to YOU, and don’t forget to look here.

And with all that, it’s time to look ahead! We have innovation kits to prepare, more career hackathons to plan, and are gearing up to launch our first broadcast entirely in Spanish in partnership with the European Parliament on the theme of Future next week. Stay tuned for all the events and activities coming soon!

As always, thank you for helping us share our mission and supporting us especially through this incredibly transformative time. From all of us g4g, we wish you a safe, happy, and healthy new year!

Exploring Creativity, Resilience, and Innovation in STEM with 400+ Girls

“I was actually one of the very few Asian students at my school and in my background. I was told that girls couldn’t achieve anything – and that just made me want to prove myself more because girls can do anything.” These were some of the powerful words spoken by one of our broadcast speakers, Sima, who joined us to talk about the importance of being resilient as she shared her story of overcoming racism, bigotry, and loss to study mathematics and become an expert in her field. In addition to Sima, we have had the pleasure to connect 20+ diverse and inspiring role models to 400+ participants during our live broadcast series Science, you had me at hello® on themes of Innovation, Resilience, Creative Challenges, and Exploration during these past few months. And, as always, we are so appreciative to all of our supporters who help us continue to reach and inspire girls in science at all of our virtual events. We are thrilled to say that these now include a broadcast series, g4g TV, science educational kits, intern programs, and career weeks!

Our episode on Innovation brought together atomic ballerina, Merritt, marine analyst, Peta, risk engineer Emma, and creative marketer, Nicola. They told us about their experience, their studies, and shared everything from how to juggle multiple careers at a time, to what it means to be risk-averse, to the importance of believing in yourself. We especially loved the overall message to embrace your doubts while not attention to negative thoughts. The best part was hearing all of the feedback from the girls cheering the speakers on – and our favourite message: “Each word I hear I feel more thrilled to pursue my STEM path. Thanks you all!”

As the summer months turned especially warm, we (virtually) packed our bags to head to Australia to launch a special episode around Exploration in partnership with National Science Week ACT. Inspired by the elements of the world and diversity in exploring our planet, we welcomed optoelectronics expert, Amrita, Superstar of STEM and coastal expert, Jennie, aerospace engineer, Bianca, digital leader, Michelle, and inventor and musician, Christine. Their messages on staying curious and being open to exploration in all we do resonated with absolutely all the girls on the line with us. They encouraged us to find role models who can push us in the direction of our passion or tribe, not being afraid to learn differently or try new things (because the spark for inspiration could come at any time), and remembering that you don’t always need to know the solution if you know the path. We loved when one 13-year-old greenlight girl in Canberra, Australia confidently asked them about her passion in science and the environment: what causes the most damage to the Great Barrier Reef? And in your opinion, what is the most interesting recent discovery in the ocean?

We also had the opportunity to work with CDK Global, a leading technology company in the automotive industry, to launch a g4g STEM Challenge Program! Between July 1 and August 6, our program welcomed 65 CDK Global interns with the challenge to help them to bring the technology and innovation of CDK to life. In addition to help building their skills in creative storytelling, collaborating with a team, presenting to an audience, breaking down complex STEM subjects, and more, each team has developed a hands-on experiment and recorded a training video. Our wonderful jury of both executives and children reviewed them and the winning teams shared their journey, inspiration, and more on a special broadcast episode on Creative Challenges.

The best part of focusing on virtual events means that we have an even bigger reach to inspire more girls in STEM. We are excited to share our upcoming collaboration with Canberra Hospital Foundation as we put together g4g TV content including our favourite moments for all our broadcasts so far! Another upcoming project is collaborating with Project Helping and CDK Global to create educational STEM kits for 3,000 children. These are top secret for now – but we can’t wait to see the result in a few months! Lastly, we are looking forward to inviting 30 young girls and boys to join a special Career Hackathon Week with AIG where they get to learn how science and technology link to all career paths, especially those at this innovative insurance company.

And what about your g4g team? They are behind-the-scenes making all sorts of fun recordings of hands-on experiments and planning the next events… so keep on the lookout! We already have upcoming broadcasts on the themes of Dynamic, Agility, Future, and more.

Thank you to our donors especially for your constant support to bring our events to life and your generous spirit which helps keep us going!

Connecting virtual STEM learning and inspiration around the world

We have been using these exceptional few months as an opportunity to proactively take steps to support our girls and community with new virtual learning and exploration in the STEM subjects. As maybe you have been also experiencing – teachers, schools, families and society overall are all trying to figure out, “How can we help our children to study remotely and stay motivated to learn?” And as our team dove into this same question, we realized we have some amazing ideas!

Without a doubt, our favourite part of this month was the launch of our g4g Broadcast series, Science, you had me at hello® which combines awe-inspiring role models with storytelling. We have found with our own impact studies that a key to inspiring girls in STEM subjects is to provide a community of role models – so why not do more to connect our global network together virtually? In all our episodes, we will connect female scientists and STEM leaders to the next generation of potential engineers, scientists and curiosity-filled young women, especially those who are determining what studies to pursue in university.

We heard incredible stories from a Private Astronaut Trainer and Space Ambassador, an electrical engineer who was the only female engineer working with Solar Impulse 2 – the world’s first solar-powered airplane to circumnavigate the globe – and an expert urban developer who works to empower refugee and disadvantaged children through self-paced, motivational electronic tools. We were thrilled that 30 young women, many of them our g4g Ambassadors, joined the broadcast from Brazil, US, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, and more. And, in true g4g-style, we broadcasted a hands-on experiment – in this case, getting our hands messy with some fabulous homemade plastic. We couldn’t help but feel inspired by the final advice of our speakers: use science for good, don’t be afraid to use your voice, and the sky is never your limit!! Feel free to check out all of our ingenious fun here!

Earlier this month, we introduced a new online portal open to everyone called Science Fun! To share more of the fun and interactive learning, we now have online resources and STEM activities that anyone can do at home. This portal gathers online resources for students of all ages, including videos, podcasts, websites, classes, games, virtual field trips, and more – all about STEM learning. Check it out here!

While we are diving into all things virtual, our signature events are still being planned for the future. For example, we are excited to prepare for 4 simultaneous events in January 2021 with one of our partners focused on girls in Greece, Spain, Italy, and France!

To all of our wonderful donors, we appreciate your generosity more than ever during this time of uncertainty. Your support has enabled us to put all these exciting virtual projects in place, and it will be with your help that we can continue to do more and more together!

We look forward to sharing even more inspiration with girls around the world as we continue championing our mission in STEM.

From an Online portal to Live Broadcasts, are you ready to follow us in our new adventures in April?!

The least we could say, is that our month of March was not really what we expected it to be. As most of the in-person events have been suspended around the world, we needed to re-think the way we are encouraging girls to learn and explore STEM subjects. And thankfully, we love thinking and re-thinking!

Today, teachers, schools, families and society overall are all trying to figure out, “How can we help our children to study remotely and stay motivated to learn?”. In March, our team dived into this same question and through our creative design process, we are now bringing forward solutions to help others for learning Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

From an online portal to live broadcasts, we are thrilled to be working on so many exciting and fun projects together, while being apart. Right now, our team is all over the world, with house offices in Belgium, Brazil or the UK, and clearly, these new working environments sparked our creativity! And we thought everybody would enjoy our scientific method of teleworking… so be ready, and see how we truly apply science to our everyday life!

The Scientific Method of Teleworking

You know us… OF COURSE we’re having fun with virtual backgrounds during our meetings…!!

As the days get slightly warmer, and March turns into April, it has occurred to me that our g4g team has officially survived nearly three weeks of telecommuting to work – a very new concept for a small office that prides itself on access to constant chocolate and coffee, and being able to bask in the sun through very large Brussels Atelier windows!

Although it’s not new to one of our members, who joins in from her lovely UK home, it has challenged all of us to test out new working conditions with the finesse and resolve of the scientific method.

If we telework from home by keeping connected virtually at regular increments then we will extremely efficient in our professional and personal work because we will save commuting time, eat less chocolate, and be able to put on laundry before and after working hours.

Our results after nearly 3 weeks, have been interesting to note.

• Our Partnership and Events Manager has been systematically observing and tracking the results of carefully calculated proportions of baked goods – ranging from muffins, to cookies, to breads – in-between answering emails and tackling partner proposals. Her two (small) official taste testers are happy to report on the best formula and modifications needed.

• Our Project Manager has been hypothesizing that creativity has a deep relationship to science learning as she explores how to best share that with kids, whilst taking on new workshop ideas and… coveting vital survival items like marzipan from the grocery store.

• Our Communication Manager has been experimenting and testing a new garden full of delightful vegetables – particularly seven small yet vibrant radishes eager to be eaten – whilst balancing the creation of a full new communication strategy for our year ahead.

• Our HR Manager has been formulating new learning methods of teaching with her three little ones (plus two dogs and one cat) at the same time as running daily, and making sure all of her team has their finances accurately calculated!

• Our Founder and Chairman has been measuring our virtual laughter responses by sending us Google 3D animal images of bears in her kitchen – at the same time as doing a million other things.

Based on our observations so far, the data suggests that there are simply too many variables to determine if our hypothesis has been accurate predicated or not yet… so… stay tuned to see how our teleworking exploration develops and discover all the fun projects we are working on!

greenlight for girls connects… THREE solutions to the challenge of virtual STEM study and motivation

As most of the in-person events have been suspended around the world, we have been proactively taking steps to support our community of students and educators worldwide in order to continue encouraging girls and boys to learn and explore STEM subjects. Teachers, schools, families and society overall are all trying to figure out, “How can we help our children to study remotely and stay motivated to learn?”  The team at g4g dived into this same question and through our creative design process, we are bringing forward three solutions to help others for learning Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. 

Ready to learn more?!

g4g introduces a new ONLINE PORTAL open to everyone, Science Fun!

In the past few weeks, we’ve explored the Internet to bring you all the most fantastic resources available to explore STEM from the comfort of your home. And this is, the Science Fun online portal, where we gather online resources and STEM activities that anyone can do at home, in the joyful and hands-on spirit that g4g is known for. This online portal, is available to all on our website and it gathers resources for students of all ages, including videos, podcasts, websites, classes, games, virtual field trips, and more – all about STEM learning.

g4g combines awe-inspiring role models with storytelling for a new g4g BROADCAST series, Science, you had me at hello©

Arguably one of the biggest projects we’ve been working on these past few weeks, is the combination of awe-inspiring role models with storytelling for a new g4g BROADCAST series, Science, you had me at hello©. When we conducted our Impact studies, we realized that providing a community of role models is key to inspiring girls to pursue STEM subjects. And that’s what we want to continue to do today! Tailored to our older g4g students who are determining what studies to pursue in university, these virtual broadcasts connect female scientists and STEM leaders to the next generation of potential engineers, scientists and curiosity-filled young women.

In this new Broadcast series, the g4g team will ask invited awe-inspiring role models to share that ONE moment, that SPARK, that apple-falling-off-the-tree EPIPHANY where they knew that science and their being were inexplicably intertwined. These are stories that will be told LIVE. They are designed to encourage you to think about what inspires you, to begin to contemplate your purpose and to create some ideas on how you can get there.

Excited yet? Keep your eyes peeled, we are launching in May 2020 and are ready to explore some fantastic subjects such as Invention, Space, Connectivity, Creativity, Planet and much more!

g4g invites you to get creative in their new AFTERSCHOOL laboratory, Science Me Crazy ©

The g4g Headquarters is in Brussels, Belgium and our chalet-looking building is used for our creative thinking. We love to host weekly Creative Hour events where we devise new workshop ideas with the latest societal STEM subjects.These moments of brainstorming have led to new learning ideas for g4g events but also has created a library of possibilities to share with schools and educators.

In the coming months, g4g will be launching a new after-school laboratory called, Science Me Crazy, which will be available for subscriptions (or offered to schools in-need through grants) so that g4g’s experiential learning methods can be brought into the classrooms or homes for augmented learning after-school… Stay tuned!

February at g4g : 120 kids met at our events, and the launch of our Global Scholarship!

We are so happy to be back for a new year of g4g fun and wonderful encounters! The start of our year went by in a blink, thanks to the wonderful 140 girls and boys we met in Belgium and the Netherlands in the last couple of weeks. For the first Saturday of February, we invited 20 girls and boys to join us in our beautiful Atelier, and discover everything there is to know about the eye, vision, and the science of biomimetics, while building cool inventions like a video projector, a microscope, and a hologram pyramid! A week after that, we launched for the first time in the Netherlands with our g4g Day in the Hague, and were thrilled to be joined by so many wonderful partners – from NATO to the European Medicines Agency, the European Space Agency, Women in Aviation, and much more – to make it a STEMtastic day! Finally, February was also the month we kick-started our new Global Scholarship Project, a campaign that will enable us to fund College education for 15 bright girls in India (more below).

Read all about our February below!

On February 1st, we were thrilled to host 20 girls and boys for our first makerspace of the year! Together, we traveled through biology, physics, and history in order to learn what biomimetics is and how it has helped inventors of the past, present, and future to create optical devices that have changed human life such as the microscope, the video projector, the 3D projector, and more! We dived into the physical laws of light reflection that enable us to create virtual image ; We discovered the biological characteristics of the eyeball and the physical law behind the functioning of an obscure camera… and even more fun, we became engineers and built three amazing optic devices : a microscope, a hologram pyramid and a video projector! Our favorite moments of the day? When we saw all the crazy faces these kids had in store for their holograms! And the “eureka” moment? When we realized that, if we were not screening a movie for a band of bats, we needed to put our cellphones upside-down in our new video-projectors!

On February 8th, we launched for the first time in the Netherlands with our g4g Day in The Hague! We blasted off from the beginning of the day as we heard from communication specialists, aerospace engineers, rocket scientists, police, and educators to remind all 120 curious girls that “the sky is quite literally the limit!” Surrounded by more than 40 role models coming from the British School in the Netherlands, NATO Communications and Information Agency, the European Medicines Agency, the European Space Agency, CoderDojo, Emerson, Women in Aviation in the Netherlands, and the Den Haag Police, the girls simply rocketed into science exploration. They had fun flying drones, patenting & approving medicine, coding with Scratch, exploring cyber forensics, extract human DNA, designing aerodynamic planes...and more! The day took place at the British School in the Netherlands with the warmest welcome from the school team.

Finally, on February 26th, we were thrilled to finally launch our new Scholarship project, as an attempt to empower young girls in India by giving wings for their dreams to take off. In 2013, thanks to our network, we managed to fund the college education of 8 Indian girls with exceptional academic records and dreams of pursuing a career in science. Today, these girls have finished up their degree, they are working or seeking further education, and we now want the program to reach new girls!

During the past few months, in India, we met with 15 exceptionally bright girls to our g4g Scholarship project, 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 engineers, entrepreneurs, statisticians, teachers and more. And the great news is ... YOU can help them do just that! To read more about this fantastic project and see how you can help, read our post here!

And that’s how we concluded this month of February!

Thank you all so very much for reading, and we are looking forward to seeing you in March with new activities, new events, and new greenlight girls met around the world!