By Marie Lhuillery-Weber and Alexaundra Zanella | Project Managers
Our past few months have been full of new events, STEM adventures, and wild dreams – as always at greenlight for girls! In particular, we've seen some wonderful reminders of the power of mentoring, of how engaging role model STEM volunteers from the community -- for even just a few hours -- can make a huge difference in the lives of young girls. At our events across the USA and India, and from our STEM Summer Camp at the International School of Brussels to our own special Summer Bootcamp, we've had girls jump to tell us how having a moment to sit and discuss their education and career aspirations (along side our favourite fun hands-on science activities) can be a moment of enormous and long term inspiration. And the key has been posing the question -- what is your dream?
One of the greenlight girls who attended our event at Stanley Black & Decker World Headquarters wrote that when the CTO asked that question, and then came and talked to each girl, she felt so inspired simply because "he sat with us today and he talked to me and my friends about life." Sometimes, all it takes is another person really seeing you, understanding your potential and drive, and reminding you that anything is possible! Thank you to all of our donors for helping us spread this message with your generous support. We’re even more proud to say that we’ve inspired over 220 young minds and engaged over 60 role model volunteers in just these few months because of you!
And how did our past few months look? We were thrilled to be back at the International School of Brussels for three weeks of Summer Camp where we offered kids a range of exciting science activities. With 25 new faces everyday, we had a blast learning everything there is to know about light, the colour spectrum, and chromatography, exploring the secrets of forensics with latent fingerprint dusting and lifting, diving into chemistry whilst making our own bath bombs, investigating electricity and circuits which we used to make our very own customised scribblebots, and so much more!
On Saturday, July 13th, we welcomed 20 excited and curious kids for our new makerspace at our headquarter office in Brussels. We explored biodiversity and how different species can coexist, all whilst learning about the importance that biodiversity plays in resilient ecosystems and environments. Kids built a terrarium (to model the greenhouse effect), engineered their own insect hotels (the perfect way to offer some rest to solitary bugs in the city), and made seed bombs!
Then, on July 18th, we headed out to the US for our first g4g @work in New Britain with Stanley Black & Decker in New Britain, Connecticut. With the help of 46 curious girls and 34 incredible volunteer role models, the girls learned how to code, explored statistics with M&Ms, engineered their own robot, created chemical reactions -- and even learned that listening, exploring, and collaborating are some of the secrets of innovators. What a day!
On July 19th, we were in India, a very special place for us. Here, we met with 58 wonderful and curious girls for our first g4g @work in Pune with Stanley Black & Decker! Helped by 13 amazing and dedicated volunteers, we hosted a full day of STEM fun and discoveries. Girls from the local communities joined us and together we dove into electrical engineering, robotics, engineering design, and had fun using the SBD tools. We were so appreciate of our wonderful keynote speakers who joined the fun, including Mr Sunil Krish, Director of Manufacturing, who heads the Pune Plant facility, along with the leadership team - Mr Satish Pawar, HR Manager, and Ms Vinitha Mani, HR Manager & Women’s Network India Chapter Leader, as well as our g4g representative, Allan Rodrigues.
Finally, the whole g4g crew gathered in our beautiful atelier in Brussels for some serious bonding and “boot camping” and of course, dream discussing! We explored a few new STEM activities, wondered how we could incorporate more VR and AI, more chocolate and more yoga into our upcoming workshops, and we took a deeeeppp breath before looking ahead at all of our fun and exciting events to come.
From all of us at greenlight for girls, we thank you for all of your continued support -- and don't forget to keep asking yourself, what is your next dream?
By Marie Lhuillery-Weber and Alexaundra Zanella | Project Managers
By Alexaundra Zanella | Operations Manager
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