Girls Coding Upward

Our project aims to give young Paraguayan women from underprivileged communities the opportunity to see the world of STEAM, by offering a year-long technical specialization program in Digital Media and Web Development. Upon finishing the program and completing an internship, they will be prepared to be part of the workplace.

Programming allows anyone to write stories with technology through confidence and capacity building. Most of our society, and specially the youth, tends to focus on consuming technology rather than getting a grasp of how empowering it is to create with it instead. Here in Paraguay we are still constrained by the fact that not everyone knows how or even has the chance of learning how to create with code. The paraguayan youth is conformed of more that 50% of the country’s population. Only 5% represents women who get to go to university, and from that, only 1,5% is represented by women that pursue careers in STEAM. These numbers are immensely affected by the absence of women who are in underprivileged socioeconomic statuses.

With GIRLS CODING UPWARD, we are addressing the importance of having a space for these young women to be successfully included into the financial market and into the workplace. Despite the careers that these women would like to pursue in the future, it is extremely important that they know what the world of STEAM has to offer, and what their role could be in it.

With one-year technical specialization program they can learn how to make use of technology in order to grow professionally in the areas of:

• Web Development: so they can design great websites with easy tools that anyone can use.

• Digital Media Management: so they can make use of the creativity and generate digital content for social media and branding of companies and businesses.

• Product Platform Administration: so they can manage and sell any products like handmade crafts.

After the completion of this program, our students will participate in an internship program. They will have the support of mentors during the entire process and psychological assistance in order to reduce the chances of desertion.

Only 5% of Paraguayan women have access to a college education. This percentage is affected by the number of women who are victims of abuse, who also happen to reach motherhood at a young age, and by the lack of opportunities regarding professional development in the rural and underprivileged areas of the country. So many women of these communities have housecleaning as their main aspiration. This is because the educational system and the professional world neglected them, due to their socioeconomic statuses.

ENFOQUE Niñez, from 2007, provides a concrete protection response to childhood that have been or are at risk of family separation and living in hard conditions. Working on diverse areas, had benefit to more than 4.000  children. In 2016 had been awarded by Stars Foundation for their Impact in the life of children. Girls Code gave more than 200 girls and young women of rural communities, possibility to develop technological skills through computer science workshops, accompanying their progress and learning since 2015. With that initiative, we have the potential to reinvent the future of the incredibly resilient women of Paraguay.

Objective: 30 adolescents and youngsters acquire technological tools for better job opportunities. Impact: inclusion of this group (some of them mothers) in the STEAM fields. The beneficiaries entered into the system of protection, violated in their rights, excluded from educational opportunities and from the training to achieve financial autonomy. They stop studying to work and those who are mothers, leave their children in charge of other people or institutions. Proposal: a training program and internships with psychosocial support (psychologist and social worker) to avoid desertion and collaboration of foster families, to care for children while their mothers are trained.

Checking progress on the web platform, where each student will have a profile. - 30 students with access to our web platform and classes (offline):

First quarter:

1. Curate content;

2. Workshops and webquest for each student;

3. Training workshops for mentor each

month in order to assurance the quality of each level.

Consolidate projects in a portfolio, that visualize all the progress in a code sharing and publishing service on the web platform. - 2nd, 3rd, 4th quarter:

1. Web Development: a project that show an Ecommerce web;

2. Digital Media Management: a online portfolio with all the products;

3. Product Platform Administration: a code sharing and publishing service.

A contract with a local company.

- The final outcome, after graduate, each student will be able to work as an intern in a local company.

GIRLS CODING UPWARD aims to create a community that support and motivate young women to develop a growth mindset, in order to face difficulties as challenges and opportunities to thrive. Our program is focused on young women who did not have the opportunity to study a professional career; throughout the process we demonstrate that learning to use technology does not require an advanced educational base. We want young woman to know that they are incredibly powerful and capable of having a positive impact, by becoming change makers and creators of new opportunities of growth.

The lack of proper financial and work inclusion of women from underprivileged communities is a global issue. We want to spread the seed of awareness to a global scale. However, we need to do so by starting in our own communities: tackling the lack of knowledge young women have regarding the technological tools that they could have within their reach; to achieve a dignified source of income, and therefore, financial inclusion. Through empowerment and technological skills’ development, they will be able to generate a new future for themselves and their families, engaging these issues in their own communities.

ENFOQUE Niñez and Girls Code are allied to complement their skills and expertise to offer an innovative and comprehensive solution.

ENFOQUE Niñez, works with children and adolescents in disadvantaged communities. From that population, they will select a group of 30 adolescents and young people who will participate in the program providing psychosocial support to ensure permanence and reduce the chances of desertion. It will also have the participation of foster families that will collaborate with the care of the children of the mothers participants.

Girls Code will develop the training and internship program.

Both ENFOQUE Niñez and Girls Code have experience in the respective areas of action. The execution of this pilot project depends on winning this Challenge. Each of the partners will provide counterpart funds and the experiences coming from other projects.

The major risk factor is the desertion of the participants (due to their emotional, economic and social conditions). For this reason, psychosocial accompaniment and the support of foster families are envisaged to facilitate the regular attendance of the participants in the training.

http://www.enfoque.org.py/

http://www.girlscode.com.py/

Both ENFOQUE Niñez and Girls Code have much experience and national/international recognition in the work we do. We are allied because we see a big potential in complementing our expertise, providing innovative and avant-garde possibilities for populations historically excluded from access to development. We apply to Solve because it gives us the possibility to add our capacities, generating an experience that after being systematized and evaluated will allows the replication with other populations, even the possibility to become a public policy in the future.

ENFOQUE Niñez is currently developing a 3 years project with the entity Itaipú Binacional (https://www.itaipu.gov.py/) named: "Deinstitutionalization of children and adolescents. Support for the Special Protection Policy". Girls Code is currently working in mentorship programs with the Autonomous University of Asunción (http://www.uaa.edu.py/).

In Paraguay, could be PARAGUAY EDUCA, Fundación Alda, Tierra Nuestra, Fundación Paraguaya.