Across the world, females are grossly under-represented in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines – and some grade 11 students in Singapore have decided to take matters in their hands.
Girls in Tech, a Singapore initiative, has organised "SheHacks", the country's first everall-female hackathon. Targeted at female students at secondary and pre-university levels from both local and international schools in Singapore, the event hopes to kindle interest in technology among female students.
Impressively, the hackathon is sponsored by Google, JP Morgan, Visa, Singapore Committee for UN Women and ThoughtWorks. It will be held from February 23 to 24 at the Google Headquarters in Singapore.
"The response has been overwhelming so far, with over 140 sign-ups," said, Gaurika Sawhney the founder of Girls in Tech who is a Grade 11 student of UWCSEA's West campus commonly referred to as the Dover Campus.
The two-day event consists of a hackathon and workshops as well as talks and mentorship from domain experts from multiple tech companies across Singapore. Basic 101 workshops will also run throughout the event, touching on topics including iOS development, web development and more.
Gaurika explained that Girls in Tech was started with the purpose to inspire young girls to explore the exciting opportunities that the Computer Science field has to offer. The initiative is open to students regardless of whether they have programming experience or not. It aims to help them build on programming skills and share new ideas, as well as gain insight into what the Computer Science field entails.