Dive Brief:
- Girls Who Code has announced it plans to grow its Summer Immersion Program this year from 375 girls in 19 classes to 1,200 girls in 60 classes.
- In order to hit this goal, the nonprofit, which aims to close the gender gap in technology, is expanding its partnerships to include 30 more companies.
- The Summer Immersion Program is a seven-week camp offered to girls with interests in computer science education, and in addition to coding lessons, the girls visit premier tech companies.
Dive Insight:
Accenture, Adobe, AIG, Akamai, AOL, AppNexus, AT&T, BSA, eBay, Electronic Arts, Expedia, Facebook, GE, Goldman Sachs, Google, Groupon, IAC, IBM, Lockheed Martin, MassMutual, Microsoft, Moody’s, Pixar Animation Studios, Square, The Honest Company, Twitter, Viacom, Intel, Intuit, and Verizon are the 30 new companies Girls Who Code will add to its partners list. Over the course of the seven-week program, each of these companies will host 20 girls and partner them with mentors from within.
Two stats that Girls Who Code often brings up are the fact that women represent only 15% of Google's tech workers and 17% of Facebook's. The reality is that there is a lot of room for improvement. While females are definitely a minority in the computer science fields, so are people of color. Finding ways to prepare and attract minorities to these fields is another challenge the tech world is currently facing. Code.org reports that of the 3.5 million students who took the AP Computer Science exam in 2012, only 3,000 were black or Hispanic.
