One nonprofit group, Black Girls CODE, isn’t waiting around for more diversity reports. The group is taking action with regular weekend coding seminars for girls of color. And this summer, it’s held boot camps where young girls learn the basics of tech design and development.
“I wanna make games, stuff like that,” says Natalia Cox, one of the girls at Black Girls CODE’s camp. “Tech is gonna take over the world. I wanna be a part of that!” The 13-year-old from San Jose, Calif., says she hopes to work in the tech field one day.
“Organizations like this help bring more people into the pipeline just as much as a diversity board at a large corporation,” says Keisha Michelle Richardson, who volunteered to mentor young girls at a camp session in San Francisco. Richardson is entrepreneur and senior software engineer at Westfield Labs.
“The biggest takeaway that I’d love them to get is just a love for building something with technology,” says Richardson. “A love for tinkering. A love for someday maybe thinking about pursuing a career with this burgeoning industry.”
In addition to brainstorming and prototyping app ideas, the campers take field trips to leading tech companies.
“I like to point out to the girls, ‘Look around, do you see people who look like you here?’ ” says Lake Raymond, the summer camp and after-school coordinator for Black Girls CODE.
On a recent tour of Google, she says, many of the girls were taken aback. “They seemed a little shocked to actually be in a place where you don’t really see anyone who looks like you.”