How you can Support the CoderDojo Girls Initiative

Today, we are launching our CoderDojo Girls initiative. Our aim is to increase the global % of girls attending Dojos from 29% to at least 40% over the next three years. Many Dojos are already taking measures to reach more young girls, we want to work with them to inspire more Dojos to join the movement to reach gender parity! This will only be achieved if everyone in the community and wider ecosystem works together to make it a priority.

Why start this initiative?

We want to help make the tech sector more inclusive and as diverse as the world we live in. Currently, 29% of young people in CoderDojo are girls and 29% of volunteers in CoderDojo are female. By supporting girls in Dojos we are helping empower girls to be tech creators. We believe all girls deserve to have to space and support to enable them the same opportunities as boys in our increasingly technological world. We don’t know what the world is going look like in 10 years time, but we know it will be powered by code!

What are we doing?

Initially we are focussing on three areas;

• Role Model Series: Every month we will  highlight, recognise and promote the amazing work of Champions and mentors who are working to engage young girls. As well as inspiring ninjas to showcase examples of peer role models.
• Content Creation: We will be putting diversity at the forefront when we create content moving forward. We’re publishing content tried, tested and approved by girls. We are also going to explore more narrative based and goal setting content. We have planned a series working with wearables, one focusing on building apps using App Inventor and a third focusing on using coding skills to solve problems important to them. We will also be creating Guides for Parents and Youths to raise awareness and support potential and current CoderDojo Girls.
• Research: In June 2017 we will be conducting the first Ninja survey which will be sent to all young people registered on the CoderDojo Community Platform (Zen). This will help to measure the perspectives of the youth in CoderDojo for the first time on a global scale and in particular it will be useful to identify areas in which girls feel most confident or least confident and the motivations and influencing factors that cause them to continue with coding.

What can you do?

• Nominate Role Models: Is there a girl in your Dojo who is working on something particularly interesting? If you want one of your female ninja’s/mentors to feature on our News feed please include a  few recent images, a short bio and a description of the project being worked on to [email protected]. 
• Share Your Lessons/Ideas:  Join our forum group where we will be facilitating discussions from the community on what has worked for them to engage girls of all ages.
• Have another idea that you’d like to share to increase participation of girls in CoderDojo? Get in touch directly with [email protected].