Generation Girl

For the last three years, we have been building the foundations of our organization and our programs to ensure maximum impact. One of our goals in 2021 and 2022 is to scale that impact to help empower as many young women as possible, and I believe The Elevate Prize can help us achieve that. Not only will this prize give us credibility and bring international awareness to our movement and programs, it will also give us the guidance and mentorship we need in order to scale sustainably. We are excited to be connected to social enterprises around the world with a similar vision and mission and to share ideas and learn from each other. The funding from this prize will also help us hire more full-time curriculum builders and community and program managers to create more standardized curriculums, improve our impact evaluation, and widen our program reach to other communities.

I had just graduated college and was working as an iOS engineer for a large startup in Indonesia. Unclear of my future career path, I was looking for local role models who could help guide me and found very few. I wanted to create a community where young women could connect with current female role models while building up their hard and soft skills to become future leaders, and Generation Girl was born. It started as a side project but has completely changed my career path. I resigned from my job as an engineer, received my Masters in Social Entrepreneurship, and decided to work on our cause full-time. I was lucky to have found a team with similar passion and personal experiences who have helped me build and grow Generation Girl. In the future, we want to create programs that support women in all stages of life and scale our programs throughout Indonesia and internationally.

Women are heavily underrepresented in senior leadership positions, especially in Indonesia. McKinsey reported in 2018 that in Indonesia, only 13% of senior management positions are filled by women. The lack of female leadership stems from the traditional role of women in Asia. In order for women to be accepted and supported in the workforce, there must be systemic change, and this is especially true in male-dominated fields of STEM. The work must start from the top of the funnel, when young women are choosing their career or life paths.

Generation Girl aims to nurture the next generation of female leaders through STEM-based programs. We have programs and networks that cater to young women from middle school to working professionals. All Generation Girl programs use STEM topics to teach five core skills our organization deems crucial for all leaders to master: problem solving, critical thinking, confidence, communication, and compassion. We combine the technical workshops with inspiring speaker sessions and interactive activities, hoping to open more doors of opportunity for young women and equip them with the hard and soft skills to choose and succeed in whatever path they choose in life.

We have built a community of budding female leaders, and our programs are created out of need from this community. We will always put our beneficiaries first and support them however we can. Because we are a community before anything else, we have been able to create programs that not only educate but also empower these young women. We have a curriculum bank that has made STEM relatable and exciting for these young women who may not have been exposed to it beforehand. The way our programs are structured, with both interactive, technical classes and guest speakers who motivate the young women, creates a holistic learning experience and allows these young women to explore in a safe environment.

With growing access to information and resources available to learn how to code and become a leader, it may become overwhelming. With the growing access to information and the many resources there are for learning, it may become overwhelming. Our strength in utilizing the power of community to build a safe space for women to explore these resources well is what differentiates us from other educational organizations.

We strive to be a data-driven organization to ensure we are creating the most impact as possible. Our Theory of Change framework uses pre- and post-testing to ensure beneficiaries gain value from our programs, and we follow up with our participants a year after the program to see longer-term impact. The best evidence of the effectiveness of our programs is the participants themselves. Young women who have graduated from our core programs have attested that Generation Girl motivated them to continue their studies in STEM.

“Without any advanced knowledge in coding and interest in STEM, I joined the [Holiday Club] program. The supportive environment helped me to learn, and I even made my own website! I decided to pursue a career in STEM field, and I choose Computer Science/Data Science as my major in university. Generation Girl has a major impact on my life’s decision. Hopefully in the future, with my degree and skill, I can contribute to solve problems in Indonesia with IT.” - Shafira Monica, Holiday Club 2019 participant