Non-Profit Spotlight: Electric Girls
In 2015, Flor Senra founded Electric Girls in response to her experience as the only female recording engineer in her workplace. Maya Ramos joined Serna, and they developed Electric Girls as a program for young girls to learn about electronics and computer programming. According to Electric Girls, only 3 out of 10 engineers are women in the US, and only 1 out of 10 are women of color. Electric Girls was founded to increase equity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, inspire young girls, and close the gap in the engineering field.
They offer summer camps and Saturday and after-school programs to teach young girls STEM. The organization gives young girls the chance to earn badges, learn new skills, join a community, and become mentors. The badges motivate the girls to challenge themselves, and they earn them for learning new skills or demonstrating leadership and kindness. In addition, those who complete an Electric Girls program are eligible to become mentors, then role models, and help teach lessons and assist other girls with their projects.
Girls in the program will learn the basics of electronics, computer programming, tools, and design before creating their take-home inventions. Female engineers also visit them and play games between their skill development sessions. Some of the skills they learn are Arduino, an electronic prototyping platform, and HTML.
For their take-home inventions, the girls decide on their own what they want to build. “The ideas that they come up with are much more creative than anything that we could come up with,” Serna said.
Electric Girls offers scholarships so that all girls can participate in their programs. 50% of all their students receive scholarships for full tuition. In addition, in response to the pandemic, they started offering sliding scale tuition for financially impacted families. Their scholarships and sliding scale tuition are made possible by donations.
Donate here to support their programs and keep this STEM education opportunity equitable and accessible.
Electric Girls also offers a STEM Activity Kit that families can get for their daughters. Like tuition, the STEM Kit price is on a sliding scale. The kit includes everything a child needs to start creating and comes with videos of instructors to help the students complete each activity if they need support.
The Electric Girls summer camps and after-school programs help girls realize how smart and capable they are and open them up to the world of science and engineering. In addition, the programs foster learning, independence, and leadership skills.
Electric Girls is constantly adding to their programming via their feedback. The organization wants everyone to feel and know they can control their future and take charge in changing things; their voices matter. Therefore, electric Girls is proud to announce that this summer, along with the general foundations of soldering, coding, etc., they will have focused lessons on Environmental Sciences and Food Sciences.
With the plan to safely return to in-person summer camp this year, Electric Girls also wants to hire inspiring instructors and awesome volunteers.
Another volunteer opportunity is for women who work in STEM to come and speak to the Electric Girls. Due to COVID protocols, all questions will be submitted to the speaker, and they get answered to the girls via video. If you are interested in either of these opportunities, contact Electric Girls today.
The parent testimonials speak for themselves. Electric Girls’ is doing necessary work to close the gap in engineering and make STEM education more equitable and accessible.