Empower Under-Resourced Girls in Costa Rica

Hi Friends!

Today is May 19, 2023. This year we have been actively having our girls´ club every week since February 2023. In July we will have a two week break. As you may now, we have nine different groups of girls in three different communities. For three weeks out of the month, we facilitate our own Soy Niña curriculum, based, as you know, on life-skills and human rights. For one week out of the month, we have special guests for special sessions. Our three topics for special sessions are: STEAM, Healthy Lifestyles and Environmental Education.

This month, we had STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) sessions. So, we had several different guests including companies, students from the University of Costa Rica, and organizations. For our high school girls, we actually went on a field trip from Desamparados to Escazu, to the offices of Akamai, a digital company that builds, delivers and secures digital experiences. It was such an inredible experience for the 7th-9th graders to be able to get inspired by women engineers and such great facilities! This is what the girls had to say:

- "Everything was very interesting, I want to study something like this and being able to share with the employees motivated me even more."

- "I would like to work in a place like this, I really liked being able to meet and share with them."

For our elementary school girls (1st - 6th graders) we had guests from Ideas en Acción, a nonprofit in Costa Rica that works to empower young girls through technology and also from the University of Costa Rica. We had students finishing careers in physics or different types of engineering facilitate. The girls learned a bit about robotics, programming, rockets, and more. Some girls even had the chance to build a rocket using water bottles. 

We really enjoyed these special sessions and we specially like introducing the participants of Soy Niña to a world of opportunities.