Give girls a greenlight in STEM around the world!

How do you want to be remembered? What will your legacy be?

When our team thinks of leaving our mark on the world, we envision actively creating moments of inspiration, opportunity, and connection that can change lives. Over these past few months at greenlight for girls, we have been reminded to celebrate the achievements of incredible women in science and innovation – and their legacy that continues to whisper encouragingly for each one of us to ask why and why not?! We celebrated the achievements of the extraordinary Dr. Barbara H. Wells who helped improve the health and livelihood of millions of people around the world by dedicating herself to agriculture and forestry research. She innovated the food industry and made a positive impact for people and the planet by helping to improve nutrition security, sustainability, resilience, and crop variety. Wow! We were thrilled to be a recipient of a GlobalGiving fundraiser in honour of her memory and we look to her life and work as inspiration in all that we do.

We also celebrated Dr. Katalin Karikó, a Hungarian-American biochemist and professor, for her pioneering research in mRNA technology which was recently recognized as the winner of the 2022 Science for the Future Solvay Prize. How incredible that her technology is leading the future of medicine and vaccine research – what a true champion of reinventing progress! Our Founder, Melissa Rancourt, had the honour of attending the award ceremony with our partner, Solvay, this past March. Melissa also had the pleasure of joining The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) E-Fest as a keynote speaker on how engineering opens doors to hundreds of listeners.

And speaking of opening doors, our inspiration has taken us from India to Luxembourg to Belgium as we held events that benefited over 950 young innovators these past few months. We started March by hosting 10 science workshops at the British International School where our team shared the fun in DNA extraction, lava lamps, chromatography, paper circuits, and seed bomb making. With over 200 students who could draw cheek cell diagrams better than we could, we were so impressed!

Our broadcast on Invest in partnership with Vodafone and HSBC on April 4th engaged 224 students as we challenged them to see how they will create exponential growth for themselves. We loved hearing from Jennifer, Head of Cloud Portfolio at Vodafone Business, Michele, a multilingual science communicator with a background in biomedical research, and Lucy, with over 20 years’ experience in biotechnology and finance, especially their great advice to the next generation. Science is part of everything and every career so we loved that Michele mentioned: “As a scientist, you work with a piece of the puzzle that fits into many other pieces to give you a big picture.” The broadcast wouldn’t be complete without a… giant fiery carbon snake? It’s true! Our team shared a carbon expansion experiment which creates giant carbon snakes which you can see in full here.

Connection means more than just a relationship or an association, it can also be a link, idea, perspective, or mindset that can be cultivated and changed. In our broadcast on Connect with AIG on April 6 we were excited to bring forward this idea to 254 students virtually. With Justine and Patricia from AIG, Nishat from Rise Research Institutes of Sweden AB, Valarmathy from Ashland Inc., and Eva from COP26 - UN Climate Change Conference, we had a diversity of speakers who creatively approached our theme. We talked about not being afraid to try new things, meet new people, or say yes – and emphasized that each new experience will help deepen your connection to yourself and others and pave the way for great things to come. To inspire the students, the g4g team had fun engineering a BIG light chain experiment (even in the dark) – for the full video, check it out here.

On April 27th, we were delighted to host a brand-new in-person event called ‘Meet The Scientist’ in partnership with Covestro in India. This event gave more time for girls to connect and learn from the scientists themselves about their real-life innovations and STEM adventures. With show and tell objects, girls met our panel of scientists to see how and what they are innovating in sustainability and circularity. What an amazing day! With 180 students aged 13-14 years from Auxilium Convent High School in Lonavala, India, we had paper planes that soared high with sustainability pledges linked to the SDGs, hand-made bee bombs for their school, and so much more. A big thank you to our own project manager, Allan, and the Covestro team for such an incredible and lasting experience. 

And from India to Brussels! On April 30th, we teamed up with Université libre de Bruxelles and CALIPER to help inspire 90 girls 12-15 to see their future possibilities differently at our g4g Day ULB. We had 15 incredible workshops from 80+ volunteer role models where girls learned skills such as working with light with ULB Astrophysics, making their own perfume with P&G, using electrolysis with Vivaqua, 2D/3D printing with FabLab ULB, human DNA extraction and coding with g4g, measuring the size of the earth with ULB Physique, VR and arduino hologram coding with Elia, discovering chromatography, pH, and density with Baxter, chatting about professions in STEM with BeWise, fruit batteries with Engie, and so much more. We were thrilled to welcome Nathalie Stephenne as our keynote speaker, a geographer and expert in the geomatic. We loved the messages from the girls after the event saying: “Girls are just as strong as boys,” “With science, we can do anything,” and “Lemons… I had no idea they could make electricity!!” We agree, it’s quite empowering to realise that you can transform something so ordinary like lemons into something as powerful as electricity.

Dreams continue to change, evolve, and hopefully flourish – and the legacy of how you make a difference for the next generation lives on in every step we all take. We thank you, our wonderful donors, for your continued support and generosity that helps us make this difference at every event and with every girl that sees herself differently in science. As always, stay tuned for our upcoming events – a broadcast on Transformation with 100+ students in Luxembourg and Kenya with Vodafone, a virtual Global Hackathon with Solvay, and so much more.

Thank you!

All the best,

g4g team