“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!
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!
You are also invited to get creative in our new afterschool laboratory, Science Me Crazy© – a platform which will be offered to schools in-need so that g4g’s experiential learning methods can be brought into the classrooms or homes for augmented learning after-school.
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. Thank you!!
It’s hard to believe that we are already at the beginning of February, and rocketing into 2020 already! We hope you know that your contribution to support the work we do around the world has had a lasting impact – on us and the girls we have been lucky enough to meet – and has contributed to an amazing result. We can’t wait to tell you all about it!
Thanks to your help, it’s been an absolutely globetrotting year which has been our biggest year yet! How big? Just this year alone we engaged 12,500+ children, 1,700+ role models at 75 events in 43 cities. We had the chance to launch in wonderful new places like Egypt with Nokia and the UAE with Covestro. We were honoured to be back for the 10th g4g Day in Brussels, the 5th g4g Day in Bridgewater, USA, and the 5th g4g Day in Krakow. For the first time ever, we hosted 8 simultaneous g4g Days in the same region of Andalucía thanks to our great partnership with Cisco, we launched our Passport to Invention activity during our annual Design Hackathon with AIG, and we visited over 10 cities across three continents with Stanley Black & Decker. This year, we also quadrupled the size of our STEM festival in India with Covestro, had more girls than ever at our g4g Day in Cincinnati with P&G, hosted countless new interactive workshops, and managed to break only one suitcase. You have helped make all that happen!
And if you want to see what it looks like on video, peek at our 2019 year here!
We want to take a moment to say thank you for choosing to support us, for taking time to value education for young girls, and for helping us encourage more and more girls to see their future in STEM. Thanks to you all, we have now reached a stratosphere level of engagement:
We wanted to share with you some of the wonderful messages we heard from our g4g girls and ambassadors around the world this past year:
And now, it’s time to look ahead!
Already at the beginning of February, we had the chance to launch our first Makerspace of the year on biomimetics where 20 children explored how to make their own microscope, build their own hologram pyramid using simple technology, and unleash their engineer side as they made their own video projector – eureka!! Last Saturday, we also 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 Britisch 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!
In 2020, we hope to organise 75+ events, reach 15,000 girls and boys, and meet with 2,000+ role models. Curious to know what’s ahead? We have Lisbon, Cambridge, Amsterdam, Seoul, Cameroon, and more locations in mind!
And, as usual, we look forward to sharing everything with you as we go along!
