Girl PowerEd

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Girl PowerEd "Blogs" Page

Inspiration

As an all-female team of STEM college students passionate about promoting gender equality in STEM and empowering young women, we were inspired by the gender disparity present in STEM fields and our own experiences as women in STEM. We were also inspired, and brought together, by the nostalgia we shared for our old childhood games. Through our shared nostalgia and struggles as women taking college-level STEM classes looking to establish careers in our respective STEM fields, we saw an opportunity to make a difference, and a unique product with a nostalgic factor, by creating Girl PowerEd.

What it does

Our approach is simple yet effective: Girl PowerEd is a website where dedicated female mentors, actively engaged in STEM studies or professions, deliver live and recorded customized workshops focused on essential STEM skills like coding. Embracing a nostalgic twist, projects are designed to infuse fun into learning; for example, mastering Python by coding beloved childhood games like Webkinz. From coding to electronics to 3-D modeling with CAD, our curriculum covers a wide range of topics, ensuring that girls can explore their interests and discover their passions with confidence. These mentors offer live teaching sessions and conduct Q&A sessions to maintain the freshness and engagement of recorded materials, ensuring an enriching experience for young women exploring STEM. Our goal is to empower young women to pursue their passions and excel in STEM fields, ultimately contributing to a more inclusive and innovative future.

How we built it

We built Girl PowerEd with a focus on accessibility, inclusivity, and empowerment. Leveraging our expertise in web development and design, we created a user-friendly platform that provides young women with easy access to STEM. We started our application process by building a React.js + Vite application for the client-side front-end development. We utilized AWS API Gateway and Lambda functionality in conjunction with a serverless package to host our API using node.js and express.js.

Challenges we ran into

One of the main challenges we faced was sourcing and recruiting female mentors with diverse expertise in STEM fields. Additionally, ensuring the platform's content and workshops were both educational and engaging presented its own set of challenges. However, through persistence, creativity, and collaboration, we were able to overcome these obstacles and create a platform that we're proud of.

The most significant technical challenge we encountered was deploying and hosting our website using our custom domain name. Despite our best efforts, we encountered numerous issues with GitHub Pages and came to the realization that it was not very compatible with the app we envisioned creating. However, this presented a valuable learning opportunity, and we are confident that we can leverage this newfound knowledge to propel this project to even greater heights.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud to have developed a platform that has the potential to make a meaningful impact on the lives of young women interested in STEM. Our project is substantiated by much research, proving for the need for Girl PowerEd. For example, studies show that exposing young girls to STEM from an early age increases their likelihood of being more comfortable with pursuing STEM as a career further down the road. In fact, according to the "Generation STEM" report by the Girl Scout Research Institute, 74% of high school girls across the country are interested in the fields and subjects of STEM. Perceived gender barriers are still high for girls and may help explain why STEM fields aren’t their top career choices. We’re also very proud of seeing our project through to a very large extent, we went from an idea to an actual, working, project.

What we learned

Through the development of Girl PowerEd, we learned the importance of collaboration, perseverance, and adaptability. Each of our team members experimented with new technologies that we hadn’t worked with before. Through being able to experiment with these new technologies, we gained new skills and learned new ways to problem-solve.