Kimberly Bryant‘s daughter, Kai, 12, loved playing video games, so Bryant enrolled her in a computer programming camp at Stanford.
“I was trying to encourage her to create something of her own if she was going to spend so much time on the web.â€
At Stanford, Kai flourished. She stayed on campus for a week learning about video game development and programming, but Bryant, an electrical engineer who worked in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, was still frustrated because she realized that of the 35 students in the program, no more than four were girls and, gender aside, Kai was the only student of color.
Bryant knew that the pipeline to tech careers was faulty when it came to blacks and she wanted to do something to help fill it with more girls. So, in April 2011, she founded Black Girls Code to help give more black girls around the country the same opportunity that Kai got at Stanford.
Black Girls Code is this week’s Tech Startup of the Week. Last year, while still working full time in the biotech industry, Bryant corralled 400 volunteers to help host workshops to 800 girls in nine U.S. cities. (Not to mention, her own daughter, now 14, is a teacher’s assistant for BGC and she’s been a member of her school’s robotics team for two years.) Her goal is to reach 2,000 students in 2013.
Most girls that come to BGC classes have not done programming before, says Bryant but when they leave one of her one-day workshops, weekend seminars, or six-week summer programs, they leave understanding and replicating various aspects of Web-based technology including mobile apps, design graphics, digital filmmaking, and robotics. Last fall they taught a six-week program on Python, a more complex programing language used for mobile app development.
The classes are underwritten by different companies on an event-by-event basis. In 2012, BGC was the Google Rise Recipient Award Winner
and received a $25,000 grant, which helped the program grow. She’s also received smaller grants of less than $5,000 from Pivotal Labs and Semantics. Universities like Georgia Tech have also been essential to her success.In addition, Bryant received support from companies like Chicago-based Thoughtworks, a global software consultancy that provided BGC with space and software engineers who teach the classes. Bryant also raised $21,000 on Indiegogo to pay for the 2012 summer program “Summer of Code†where girls were taught HTML, CSS, and were able to walk away with the ability to create their own web pages.
This weekend, the organization is hosting two landmark events. On March 9, 2013, the organization is holding a national video game challenge simultaneously in San Francisco, Atlanta, and Chicago. And, at SXSW Interactive, BGC, MoJo Media Works and Blacks in Tech are presenting a Weekend iPod Film School and Web Design Workshop for Girls.
Here, Bryant outlines what parents and educators need to do to encourage and support girls interested in technology-based fields of study:
Parent engagement and knowledge is key. This year Black Girls Code began building parent workshops as a sub-component of the student workshops. “Giving parents tools and information about the field of technology and how to support their student in their studies is really important to keep girls and boys engaged in the field,†says Bryant.
Provide girls with peer mentors, as well as industry mentors. “The [problem] circles back to exposure and access. There are just not a lot of women in the field right now. Girls don’t see themselves reflected. They rule it out before they start down the path of discovery. That’s a problem. We need to encourage girls to go into the field. But the women that are there now also need to step out as mentors to really support the next generation.”
Look for in-school and afterschool programs that teach technology. “Most public schools in the inner city don’t even have the equipment, let alone the teaching staff, to teach our kids the programming skills we are looking at. That is one of the things that is a struggle for us. We can’t do everything in an afterschool program. We need to push on that policy issue of getting access to technology and teacher training in the K-12 system. It is really lacking there now as a curriculum. There has been a focus on STEM for awhile, but not as much on the T in the STEM. We focus on the science. But we kind of let the tech piece lack throughout our educational system. That is one thing as a nation we are going to have to address if we want to make any significant progress to get our kids prepared to enter the field and fill the jobs that are going to be available over the next couple of decades.â€