A group of talented young women, ranging from elementary school to high school, presented their final projects at the Girls Who Code Hackathon Showcase this past Friday at the 2017 National Governors Association Summer Meeting at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence.

Girls Who Code is a nonprofit organization created by lawyer and politician Reshma Saujani in 2012 dedicated to creating the largest network of female engineers in the United States and working to close the gender gap in technology. Since its inception, 10,380 girls have participated in the clubs program, including almost 7,000 high school students, and almost 2,000 have experienced the summer immersion program for themselves. With computer science related careers rapidly growing around the world, Saujani expressed the importance of continuing to allow young women to participate in programs like Girls Who Code to inspire and provide resources that will help them change the world.

Each group was tasked with answering the question: How can leaders empower citizens to use technology creatively to help their communities stay ahead of the curve? Submissions were scored with up to 20 points based on simplicity and ease of use, creativity, social impact and design based on user’s experience and interactions with the product.

One of the students participating in the program was Samantha Evans, who will be entering her senior year at Cranston West High School in the fall. Evans, along with her group, created a website that helps lower income women connect with small businesses to build a relationship for potential employment opportunities. With only one other group at the Hackathon representing Rhode Island, Evans said she enjoyed being one of the few to represent her home state to all in attendance.

“It’s opened my eyes about new technology that is going around and how it’s growing, so for the future, things like this are great opportunities for me,” she said. “It definitely feels great, especially being one of the only groups from Rhode Island. I loved the experience and got to meet new friends and learn new things.”

Aimee Duarte, interactive digital media teacher at the Cranston Area Career and Technical Center, began teaching Evans, as well as a handful of other girls, at their Girls Who Code club this year after school. Though she was unsure of whether she could find any students to commit to doing work over the summer, Evans came through and was eager to help.

“It’s fun to watch Sam enjoying herself here,” Duarte said. “She’s very personable and she’s a team player. I know she likes graphic design and for her to be sitting here and having fun and saying ‘you know what, I might fill out an application for this summer program,’ I hope it just opens a door to her that maybe she didn’t think of or think that she could do.”

Duarte decided she wanted to work with girls to help them get involved in computer science careers when she noticed the difference between enrollment totals for men and women in her digital media courses. In an average class of 21, she would be lucky to have two female students. She began searching online to try and find clubs and organizations that she could get involved in and stumbled across Girls Who Code.

While there is still a lot of room to grow for women in computer engineering-based workplaces, both Duarte and Evans said it all begins with pursuing interests and having an open mind. The two also said they are already looking forward to participating again next year.

“I always think that it’s great as long as they get something out of it,” Duarte said. “You just have to go after your interests. That’s what did it for me. If they give it a shot, there are so many different avenues to go in; it may open their eyes to something they didn’t even think of.”

“Try new things, go to new places, attend new events,” Evans said. “I had never heard of Girls Who Code before I joined, and coming to the Convention Center to see it all was great for me.”

This summer, Girls Who Code will be hosting 80 programs in 11 cities including Boston and New York. Additional information can be found at GirlsWhoCode.com.