Give girls a greenlight in STEM around the world!

“We only see those in movies, that’s so cool,” exclaimed one girl as she leaned in to touch the plasma ball with her fingertips, watching with amazement as the filaments gathered together to meet her fingers. She was just one among the 100 girls that we welcomed at Nokia in Cairo – our first greenlight girls to explore STEM fun in Egypt! Part of our mission when inspiring in STEM is to introduce all of our attendees to concepts and technology that they may not have ever seen before but that may be found in their everyday life. In doing so, we have the opportunity to remind them that the impossible is indeed possible – and they can design their future career in any way they dream with STEM. Just believeing that anything is possible is the necessary mindset for invention and innovation to begin!

To all of our donors, we thank you for all of your support as we continue inspiring girls in STEM around the world. Just these past few months, we’ve had over 15 events in over 10 countries engaging over 1,000 children. As part of our recent events, we’ve especially invited our girls to grab their invention passport and be inspired with female innovators in STEM that have come before us – from Maria Telkes, PhD (aka the “Sun Queen”), to actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr, to researcher Dr Shirley Jackson, to banker and inventor Miki Agrawal, and more! What will our next generation of STEM leaders discover next?

So, grab your passport and check out some highlights of where we’ve been and what we’ve done!

We started October in Canada with our first g4g Day @Ottawa with our global partner Nokia. With the help of 50 volunteers, we welcomed 200 girls aged 11-15 to discover the fun in electrical engineering with electricity (snap-tricity to be exact), statistics and chocolate, fruit batteries, and more. The girls reminded us that if you could travel at the speed of light, you’d be able to go around the Earth seven and a half times in a single second!

Only a day after, we were thrilled to be back to Ireland for our third g4g Day @Dublin with our global partner AIG. Helped by 20 wonderful and dedicated volunteers, and with the amazing support of some players and coach from the Gaelic Athletic Associations (GAA), we hosted a full day of STEM fun at the AIG offices in Dublin. We invited 80 young curious and excited girls to join us and explored all the science hidden in GAA sports (hello gaelic football and camogie), we experienced chemistry with bath bombs and polymer worms, we dove into electrical engineering with Scribblebots, we became codebreakers, and had fun with statistics using M&M's.

Our month also brought us to the European Parliament in Brussels, for this 2019 edition of the Generation Code with Public Libraries 2030 with 20 girls from the local Brussels community. We also had the honour of being asked to give a keynote speech at the beginning of the STEAM-B Learning Conference at the Aloha Collage in Marbella, Spain. We saw 400 kids from late primary school to high school and inspired them with hands-on workshops.

On October 14th and 15th we were absolutely thrilled to come to Egypt for our first ever g4g Days @Cairo with our global partner Nokia. 100 girls joined us and together, we dived into bio-chemistry, robotics, electrical engineering and plasma physics. We have heard so many girls comment "wow" -- so many "c'est fou" -- that we couldn't count them all!

Then, on Friday, October 18th – on to London! We were back for our third Design Hackathon in London with our global partner AIG, along with 50 girls from the local community. The girls worked as groups to come up with innovative solutions helping others. After building their prototypes, they came up with the coolest ideas -- from the "Petbot" to noise cancelling headphones, to an alarm clock that wakes you up with compliments... we loved how all of the ideas were different and deeply personal to the girl's lives.

Between October 22nd and 24th, we headed to the Interactive STEM Festival” Youth Mobile” (YoMo) in Los Angeles. What an adventure! Over the course of three days, we welcomed over 14,000 students and educators, and met with almost 1000 professionals and exhibitors. At our booth, kids could grab their “passport to invention” and explore the amazing work of 8 inventors. From Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of the bullet-proof fabric Kevlar, to Maria Telkes, the Sun Queen, we took the kids with us on a journey and explored innovations in Solar Energy, Materials, Telecommunications, and Artificial Intelligence.

On October 29th, we headed to the UAE with our global partner Covestro for our first g4g Day @Dubai at Dubai Science Park! We were thrilled to host our first event there, and even more to be joined by these wonderful 100 curious and enthusiastic girls. Then, a day later, we welcomed 50 girls to Silverstone, UK, for our first g4g Day @Silverstone UTC, organized with Stanley Black & Decker and Envision Virgin Racing. Everyone especially enjoyed an exciting visit to the Envision Virgin Racing Formula E Garage, where girls experienced ‘a day in the life of racing’ and discovered how technicians and engineers work behind the scenes with Stanley Black & Decker tools to maintain the team’s leading position in the Formula E Championship.

With all the potential for innovation, science, and technology to change the world, it’s part of our pleasure to inspire the girls in the ways we have these past few months. We appreciate your support as we continue to engage with curious and enthusiastic girls. Look out for our next events coming up in Luxembourg, Brussels, India, and more!

Thank you all!