Workshop to Teach Middle School-age Girls of Color to Develop Software Programming Skills

Feb. 13, 2012 - PRLog -- Black Girls Code, a non-profit organization helping girls of color, ages 7 to 14, to become successful computer programmers is holding its second  software development workshop from  February 18, 2012 - March 24, 2012 in partnership with the San Francisco office of ThoughtWorks .  The 6 week long workshop will prepare a group of enthusiastic and entrepreneurial girls from the Bay Area to participate in the upcoming National STEM Video Game Challenge (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) (http://www.stemchallenge.org) while teaching them traditional software development skills necessary to compete in the business world.

Black Girls Code has captured the attention of technology and community leaders around the country for its innovative approach to empowering girls from underrepresented communities to pursue career ambitions in an array of STEM-related fields.  The organization was recently awarded a distinguished Google RISE grant and was one of 26 non-profit groups (out of 400 applications) to be cited for its work with diverse student populations.

Program founder Kimberly Bryant cites growing participation by girls from greater San Francisco as the motivation for expanding Black Girls Code into other U.S. cities in 2012 through partnerships with community-minded technology and engineering firms.  The February 18th event will take place in the San Francisco offices of ThoughtWorks, a social and commercial community whose purpose is to revolutionize software creation and delivery while advocating for positive social change.  

“Companies like Google, ThoughtWorks and our other corporate sponsors share our vision for inspiring young women of color to stretch their imaginations and set goals that have been traditionally outside of their ambition and reach”, notes Bryant.   “Our objective is to provide these girls with the technical skills and inspiration to become technology leaders of tomorrow.”
Black Girls Code focuses on teaching its students the basics of computer programming in Ruby and Python, two of the most popular dynamic programming languages used in the development of software, web and gaming applications.

Details on the February 18th workshop and participation in future Black Girls Code sessions are available at http://www.blackgirlscode.com or by emailing future@BlackGirlsCode.com.