Bringing More Women Into Tech

One of the biggest goals of the VISTA Code Corps program is to give kids who would be less likely to participate in computer science, including girls, a chance to start working with CS. In my time as a VISTA, I've had the privilege of attending a few different trainings on including girls in computer science as well as STEM. Here is some of what I've learned.

Appathon!

Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland held its first-ever Appathon last Saturday, November 7th! Our theme was Balancing a Healthy Lifestyle.

Bridging the Gulf: Why BGCP Would Benefit From More Admin Site Visits

Disclaimer: today's post is largely about Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland.  There's a good chance that what I'm talking about applies to management in other organizations, but this entry will be more focused on the process at BGCP.

There are two groups of staff at Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland. On one hand, we have the Administrative staff: various executives, officers, and coordinators (and the VISTA team). On the other, we have Program staff: these people work in the Clubhouses and are dedicated to day-to-day delivery of program to all of BGC Portland's kids.

The problem is this: there is a gulf between the two groups. The Admin staff spend most of their time in their offices working to keep the back end of the clubs running. They are not able to spend much, if any, time working with the kids and the Program staff. This is no one's fault: their job is vital to keeping the organization running smoothly and they take it seriously. I know that many of them, myself included, would love to take more time out to spend working directly with the kids. After all, the desire to help kids grow and succeed is the glue that sticks everyone here together.

What isn't apparent to most Admin staff though, is how huge the gulf seems to those on the other side.

Why Community History Matters in a Volunteer Orientation

In revamping Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland's volunteering system, I had the opportunity to take a ten-week course on the AmeriCorps VISTA site all about volunteers. I learned a great deal in the process, and one of the main things I took away from the course was the importance of a strong volunteer orientation. In our meeting with the Clubs to discuss the volunteering system today, though, I was given a perfect example of why one of the aspects of a strong orientation, the "Cause" section, includes the history and populations of the neighborhood.

Meeting with the Clubs on Volunteers

As part of my VISTA assignment this year, I was asked, along with my co-VISTA, to entirely revamp Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland's volunteering program. This has been a very exciting process over the last few months, and we were excited to hear that BGCP has put a new position in place to continue this process. Over the past month or so, we have been working with this new Coordinator of Program Collaborations and Volunteerism, Tonya Peshel. Tonya and I just finished meeting with two of our Boys & Girls Clubs to talk to them about their perception of the volunteering system as it stands and their vision of how the program can change to benefit the Clubs' operations.

Let Kids Lead: CS First Members as Advocates and Program Assistants

The Goal: Kids as Leaders

One of the primary goals of the Boys & Girls Club movement is to foster leadership skills and self-confidence in our members. Each of our programs is targeted at one or more of our five Core Program Areas: The Arts; Character and Leadership; Sports, Fitness and Recreation; Health and Life Skills; and Education and Career. Our experience with CS First has been exciting because, in running the program, we have found that kids are sharing with each other and finding the confidence to become leaders in the group.

"Can I Talk About the Program?"

I was at our Blazers Boys & Girls Club in Northeast Portland to do one of our new monthly check-ins with the staff there, when something very cool happened at Club Meeting prior to the program. We had a new CS First module starting up and one of the staff members was standing at the front of Club Meeting telling the kids about CS First. This staff member was fairly new at the Club, and had not had the opportunity to run CS First yet, so it wasn't the most compelling introduction. So, one of our kids raised his hand and asked to come up and tell the group about the program instead.

Now, this is not a usual occurrence, at least in Portland. Before I came on board with Code Corps, I spent two and a half years working directly with kids delivering programs, and I can count on one hand the number of times kids were so excited about a program that they wanted to get up in front of their peers and try to convince them all to join. This is what has been so awesome about CS First: it has inspired kids to talk to other kids and let them know that they can learn about technology, and it's great.

Collaborative Problem Solving

One of the core ideas of CS First is that in technology, as in many things, you don't always succeed the first time you try. One of the great things about CS First and Scratch is that kids are encouraged to help their neighbors solve problems, and in the process they gain confidence in their own ability as leaders. In July, I ran CS First at two different Clubhouses and in each case we found children who excelled at solving problems they came across. In each case, these kids (one boy and one girl, both of demographics that are underrepresented in the tech community at large) were excited to help their peers solve problems, and in both cases we were able to have these kids become helpers for the whole group. CS First further supports this process by asking kids to put up sticky notes thanking those who helped them solve problems during the program. It is an enormous confidence booster to know that your peers are looking to you for guidance, and to see yourself as a knowledgeable leader who knows about computer science.

Building on the Foundation

We've already seen that CS First builds a strong foundation of kids helping other kids and naturally developing their leadership skills. The task for us as facilitators, then, is to help nurture this process and provide opportunities for these kids to keep building on the foundation of leadership we've established. In the very near future, I'll be speaking to our Club Directors about establishing a process for these kids to become official helpers for CS First. The perception of what kind of person succeeds in computer science is a huge determining factor in what kind of kid chooses to pursue it. As kids from backgrounds that are underrepresented in IT practice leadership in the field, and others see people like them succeeding, we can change that perception and allow kids to succeed where they would have struggled before.