Girl Up Scientist Girls - UN Foundation

Girls struggle to be brave at school, but most of the time, they face other challenges concerning boys’ behavior and classmates’ jokes about being a girl. Children reproduce sexist jokes from their parents at home, and this continues to perseverate causing traumas that remain with girls for the rest of their lives unconsciously. Therefore, girls start doubting themselves. Girl Up Scientist Girl (GUSG) aims to explain didactically to parents what girls suffer every day at school, so they can reeducate their children to be feminists. We give lecturers biweekly personalized for the problems their children have suffered at this time. If scaled globally, GUSG could transform an entire generation to feminists, since the greatest influence is given inside home.

The way girls are educated is not okay; we aim to change that so they can grow up with more confidence. In our community, girls must wear pants to school so they don’t attract the attention of boys as they supposedly would in shorter clothes; girls are not comfortable asking questions and having doubts in the classroom, as they do not want to be seen as incapable; girls are ashamed and even miss classes when they are in their period, as they were raised to think this is very shameful for them; girls are bullied by colleagues. In addition, there are many others who do not even go to school, as they have to stay at home taking care of the house and the brothers. Girls don't participate in scientific olympics, which are the idealization of what it feels like to be challenged and that can go beyond, due to their lack of self-confidence. We encourage girls to pursue their dreams, makes them feel free to answer their questions, and, most importantly, includes their parents so that they understand the reality of their children at school and can collaborate from home, giving a different education regarding behavior towards other colleagues.

Our solution is to include the parents of boys and girls in basic education and give interdisciplinary classes to young people. Parents would see the reality of girls in schools through their eyes. As we are a group of  17 year olds, we can explain in a didactic way and try to do dynamic activities so that parents feel included and actively participate in their children's education, once we have been through the same situations.. Furthermore, in our meetings, we bring interdisciplinary classes that are not traditionally taught in schools. As for interdisciplinary classes, instead of teaching biology, we teach how to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies; instead of teaching history from a eurocentric view, we give examples of women of African descent and what they suffered; instead of making physics and chemistry seem impossible, we first talk about Marie Curie's incredible achievements and show that girls can too.

Girl Up Scientist Girls attends primarily parents of boys and girls in the age between 5-15, and these students by offering classes on an online platform. GUSG gives preference to those parents who have a 10th-grade education or lower, and have a maximum monthly income of $400.00. Nonetheless, during this pandemic, we can only attend families who have an internet connection at home, to later get sponsorship and provide internet for others.

We provide them individual access to our team to understand their needs and improve their engagement as closely as possible. If something bigger happens, like sexual abuse inside the girl’s house, we forward the problem to a voluntary specialist.

The famous Brazilian writer Coelho Neto used to say: “It is in the education of children that the virtues of parents are revealed." Above all stages of the human formate process, there is one primordial pillar, that of derived from the family relationship. This crucial component is the main reference for young people in the formation and, because of that, it determines how they will act in the school. Thereby, is the family who, based on socialization, fuels, in the children, discrimination, motivation with studies, and the desire to break stereotypes. Helping parents be more virtuous reveals a better world.

Girl Up Scientist Girls makes an incredible pioneer work on including children’s parents in their apprenticeship. We aim to include them to be aware of what happens inside of a classroom through girls’ eyes. With that, parents will be able to raise their children in a different way and transform a generation of future feminists. Furthermore, our initiative teaches subjects in an innovative way: instead of teaching biology by memorization, we show examples in women's daily lives, such as sexual education and how not to get pregnant, if that is what they wish; instead of teaching history through a eurocentric way, we show African women's biography. All in all, our initiative mostly desires to incentivize women to be comfortable at school, enhancing a light inside of them, seeking for challenges and feeling capable of realizing it.

Girl Up Scientist Girls provides a platform with recorded classes and online meetings. Besides being a simple technology, the differential is the method that we use. The classes and meetings are organized for the girls and their parents; the purpose is to teach and have a conversation both with students and parents about things that are not usually mentioned in school. The platform includes interactive and educational games, online podcasts doubt sessions, meetings, and recorded classes area and also materials for the girls and their parents.

Furthermore, we will provide podcasts – interviews, conversations, tips and classes summary – that would also work offline if downloaded. The technology relies on all the project because it is the main way to reach girls from different places. The offline podcast’s idea is to facilitate for the families whose internet connection does not work well.

Unpleased with the non-inclusive education mechanism, GUSG decided to analyze the basis of this problem to find a solution. It is through initial socialization that each child has their first contact with biases, gets motivated with studies and where they resort to make choices. That is why parents should be in sync with education. The literature brings numerous contributions on this topic, the article “Family participation in children’s school life” available in <https://teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/22/22133/tde-26092017-212918/publico/WANDERLEIABADIODEOLIVEIRA.pdf> shows positive results about the presence of parents in the learning process, emphasizing how the correct interest motivates students, and the article "Relationships between bullying in adolescence and family interactions“ available in <https://www.bdm.unb.br/bitstream/10483/3132/1/2011_LaisSouzaRibeiro.pdf> evidence as a good family structure, helping to make betters decisions, prevents this violence at school. In addition, we perceive the perpetuation of stereotypes that, strengthened at home by parents and reproduced at school by children, demotivate girls. Therefore, we offer family education. 

  Using videos classes, as the Khan Academy, GUSG will teach parents about the importance of their participation in the learning processes and how to improve. The group will, to open minds, propose, for the family, lessons, with different points of view, on untreated topics at school. Nevertheless, the great innovation will be discussions between parents and us, girls in our place of speech, about the reality of their children, and guide them on breaking stereotypes.

     The difference between the way girls and boys are educated at home has a direct impact on the formation of the new generation society. By receiving an education geared towards perfection, girls often overcharge themselves and, consequently, feel insufficient to pursue a career that is mostly represented by men. Therefore, today, only 50% of women worldwide of working-age take part in the labor market whereas the percentage between men is 76% (UN data). For this reason, our project purpose is to “re-educate” elementary school students’ parents so they can raise a non-sexist generation.

     Our project was created under the assumption that change is a process carried out by individuals and can be facilitated by interventions. The success of our service is dependent on the teamwork of our members and engagement from our community. To measure the deployment we will work to accomplish our goals in steps: transmitting knowledge, seeking behavioral change, and expecting a significant increase in the percentage of women in the labor market of our city in 20 years’ time.

     In the face of those objectives, as a group of teenagers, we firstly will be giving lectures to elementary school students’ parents based on our own experiences at school and other extracurricular activities aiming to envision the need for support from parents for a gender equity future. We will teach topics that are usually not taught in school and demonstrate the importance of giving education a new perspective by emphasizing what's been out of school books, such as women's’ achievements in STEM fields. Secondly, we foresee a change in parents’ behavior towards their children, as they would know the consequences of a sexist education and the positive impacts of an economically active woman. Lastly, we expect to see, in the long term, boys and girls being equal partners and having the same opportunities and motivation to reach their goals. 

     In conclusion, our aim is to form a non-sexist generation by re-educating parents in order to see empowered women taking place in the labor market and being able to accomplish their dreams with bravery.

Since November 2019, we work in a school and attend 300 parents, divorced or married, and more than 200 children. They engage in different forms: asking questions, practicing the proposed activities, and sending us feedback.

One year from now, we aim to grow outside Goiania, our hometown, and englobe our state, supporting 40 schools, achieving an average of 12,000 parents and the respective children, around 8,000 children. As soon as the leader of the project and other girls frow, we intend to have other girls in leadership and pass ahead as a legacy.

By 2024, our goal is to englobe all of our country, Brazil, and have leaders in each state coordinating schools and parents around the country, achieving more than 350,000 parents and 240,000 children, achieving at least 20% of impoverished institutions in Brazil. (184,100 institutions). Additionally, some of us are going to graduate in United States, so we intend to expand the project during college around the country.

In 2021 our main purpose is to provide classes for more than 12,000 parents and their respective children outside Goiania and support our state to get into the project. Also, we plan to develop a way to provide the learning process to people who don't have access to the internet or don't have enough time or money, offering them, the same opportunity as well as the others in the program.  

For the next five years, we hope we will be working with other group leaders, schools, and students all around the country, teaching the Brazilian and American society that rising feminist citizens it's not allowing power only for women but putting women in high-powered political charges, laboratory surveys, hospitals, universities and treating them with respect and equality.

Girl Up Scientist Girls has a goal to be accomplished on a long-term basis since the process of changing the way girls are educated does not see its results immediately. Therefore, the initiative will require continuous financial support in order to keep working overtime. In addition to that, there is also a demand for funding to expand our reach, especially when it comes to an extended future since the project intends to attend families with lower income, and without internet access. To that end, we will need to raise funds to provide these people access to our platform and app, guaranteeing accessibility in lower-income places, and hire a suitable staff to work with each family. Furthermore, into extending the project, we also will have a cultural issue once we have reached people with different religions, traditions, or values, since some of our approaches may contrast with their beliefs. We aim to respect each and every family tradition, giving them a great experience with our project and our goal to their children.

Girl Up Scientist Girls first started its project with families from our local community and, over time, are going to expand our reach to a regional, and possible national and international level. For our initiative to grow, GUSG will need funding, so our team will seek sponsors starting by local schools, and as our project expands, we hope to receive sponsorships from bigger investors such as Solve, which will help our project grow and gain greater attention. Consequently, we will be able to help more families. Aiming to spread across the country, we are faced with the challenge of how to provide our services to so many people: with the help from our sponsors, developing an app and an online platform would guarantee accessibility anywhere. Furthermore, as we reach other countries, we encounter different cultures, traditions, and religions, which may oppose some of the values we share. In light of that, GUSG would hire a special team designed to help us with the cultural shock: each country would have its own group of people in charge of adapting our methods so that our project could fit perfectly anywhere, despite any cultural differences.

We are a local club, and this solution is our only. However, Girl Up is a global movement that fights for girls’ and women’s rights. Each club is autonomous to choose how they will contribute to change our sexist society.

We are 13 young girls composing an NGO in Goiania, Goias, Brazil. Nicole Vieira Pires is the president and founder, who works on contacting parents and teaching classes. Victoria Martins and Gabriela Mendanha are the vice-presidents, who are supporting our media. The other girls work on media, participate in the meetings, and organize our calendar.

Once in school, I asked in a chemistry class what was the substance the teacher was presenting: steel filings. “You should already know this. You are a girl,” he told me, while the class laughed at his answer. After googling it, I saw that it was a material used to clean dishes and was composed of many substances. After that, I realized it didn’t happen just with me. A lot of girls were unmotivated to pursue their academic careers by their teachers and parents, especially in STEM fields. After that, I didn’t give up. In fact, I started to dedicate myself even more. However, the more I grew up in science, the fewer girls I saw.

I felt a need to change this reality. I called some friends who felt the same way as me, excluded from academic intellect, and we founded Girl Up Scientist Girls. Months later, we realized the problem was deeper. Girls were not only outside from STEM fields but also from school. As the project gets bigger and accepted by young girls, we expanded to their parents to eradicate the problem.

Finally, I see how capable we are to reach young girls, and their families as we deeply understand what they feel, and respect, listen, and reeducate their families with patience and empathy. Nowadays, what we really need is tolerable people, who respect and discuss pacifically when it comes to divergent opinions - and what is what we value the most.

-Nicole Pires

We have local schools as partners, as we are able to voice our ideas to students. We don't have any company as a partner, however, Girl Up Brazil provide us direct contact with UN, and we can raise funds from them, if we need.

Since our format of intervention is an educational platform, it’s easier to connect beneficiary and customer. Students and parents participating in our project will help create a more equal world for themselves and other generations to come. At the same time, socially conscious investors and possibly future employers will get to know the featured parent and student of each month, giving voice to underprivileged parts of society and bringing them into the spotlight of greater opportunities. By providing, through our platform, interdisciplinary lectures, tutoring, and workshops for both parents and students our hope is to educate parents on how hard it can be for young people in school -- especially girls. These connections will provide to our investors an open-minded student that will add a modern and socially aware view to their companies and the world. Initially, we hope to become a national platform and maybe someday a global platform. Since we believe we can change the world through education, our initial main goal will be to create partnerships between local schools so that they can also use our platform which will be another form to reach out to customers and more beneficiaries. Once up and running we plan to break down our revenue sources for 50% expansion of our program, 30% for when our students go off to college to help them with financing and scholarships and the remaining 20% will be for investing in other social awareness and gender equality projects around the world.

Besides the financial support from MIT Solve, in order to be financially sustainable, we are looking for partnerships with companies, such as technological ones and the ones of female products (pads, clothes, makeup, sports equipment...) because this project will not only be a helper to a lot of girls and families but also for the companies.

We are also going to create a money fund for all our projects since this project has no profit interest. Meanwhile, we intend to raise money to help the families and their girls in need through social media and websites.

As a musical performance, which is only possible through the combination of different notes, the educational system can only be perfectly executed if all different groups are included. Unfortunately, women are one of the excluded minorities from this process and, unpleased, GUSG decided, seeking to change this reality, to propose, based on our experiences, a project of guidance to parents. Nevertheless, with the available resources, we were unable to make an inclusive platform.

 In this scenario, Solve would help us to universalize our project. Aiming at easy acess, we would create an free app with all our classes. These videos, also translated into pounds, would approach: subjects not studied at school; computer education -because the post-covid-19 world will depend on the online world; and our discussions about the female universe. In addition, we would make content to schools explaining the relevance of communication with parents, and, also, offering a guide to help the institution encourage students doing this function. 

  Therefore, more notes will be played in our equality music. Families who have internet access will be able to contact our method through the app. Visually and hearing impaired people will have the necessary accessibility. The illiterate and those who do not have Wi-fi will also be able to take learning our methods by the school, which will either apply the guidelines or pass our recordings in meetings. Parents will be educated by the videos, children, learning correct, will not reproduce stereotypes and, consequently, girls will study better.

Having a partnership would be enriching to expand the project and distribute it to other educators nationwide. Moreover, we need support with the technological part when it comes to englobe students from all around the country.

We believe we can expand, reach out to more people, and consequently help more people when working in partnerships. Since GUSG is already a United Nations Foundation group, we hope to continue receiving help and support from them. Not to mention, local schools we hope to get on board with our project and work side by side which will be very important since we are starting small and helping our local students is our first big step. Additionally, we would like to partner up with other Brazilian organizations/associations that also focus on education. Such as, “Fundação Estudar” and “BRASA - Brazilian Student Association” that can help us initially reach out to the most Brazilian students as possible and can help us start making the platform global. And most importantly, when going global, MIT faculty and Solve Members, which are the main reason for our reaching out and participation in this year’s MIT Solve competition, can help us start taking more brazilians abroad for higher quality education and a bigger transformation for the world.

If Girl Up Scientist Girls gets national or even international, women’s voices will be heard. Estatistically, we were supposed to be inside home taking care of our husbands by 15 years old. If by 17 we founded na international iniciative,  girls may see them in the same position; if we are here, it's because society let us. We don't want any more girls to be eaders by pity. We want to raise a genaration of children who understands that girls are as capable as boys, and they must change their behavior to society change as all.

As a musical performance, which is only possible through the combination of different notes, the educational system can only be perfectly executed if all different groups are included. Unfortunately, women are one of the excluded minorities from this process and, unpleased, GUSG decided, seeking to change this reality, to propose, based on our experiences, a project of guidance to parents.
 In this scenario, we would create an free app with all our classes. These videos, also translated into pounds, would approach: subjects not studied at school, for example African history; computer education; and our discussions about the female universe.
  We will act with several adults and childrens. Families who have internet access will be able to contact our method through the app. The illiterate and those who do not have Wi-fi will also be able to take learning our methods by the school, which will download the app and either apply the method guiding parents and students or showing our recordings in planned meetings with the families. 
Furthermore, the children, With parents and/or caregivers interested in teaching good virtues, will be less biased and will encourage classmates and friends to believe more in themselves letting go of any social standards. As for girls, with proper guidance, they will now how to react better to daily discouragement and how to pick themselves back up. Then, consequently, they will be successful in future economic life because will have a excellent education. More notes will be played in our equality music.

Girl Up Scientist Girls is an NGO that aims to encourage girls to participate in science by providing a structure for them to pursue their dreams. We want to engage more women in science. We believe that it will cause a greater and more personal impact through our example: founders, autonomous and prize winners, and scientific Olympians at the age of 17, that they are capable and must believe in themselves (more self-confidence). When we were invited to participate in the Brazilian women's symposium in STEM to present our whole idea to Brazil, which happened in the Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA), we realized that the hardest university in Brazil has only 10% of the spaces occupied by women. Because of that, would be awesome to use AI and neuroscience research to investigate, respectively, an algorithm to quantitatively model the increase that we could cause in the number of women in STEM and also investigate what has always made women feel less confident and the implications that macho behaviors have on this feeling.