Sometimes looking back on where we have been is a great way to look ahead to all of the goodness the future holds. Today we are flashing back  to 2014 and all of the tech divas and amazing volunteers we encountered during a very eventful 2014! From hackathons to music festivals, here are the highlights of BGC's 2014. Stay tuned--there's more to come!

February

Black Girls CODE’s Memphis Chapter hosted its first workshop of the year, Build a Webpage in a Day, on February 22. Thanks to a generous grant from the Memphis Chapter of the Society of Information Management received by Memphis Public Library, the workshop was free of charge!

March

Our New York Chapter hosted a Build a Webpage in a Day workshop on March 22, which introduced girls to HTML, CSS, and basic web structure.

April

We hosted our first ever workshop in Dallas, Build a Webpage in a Day, on April 19. Over 80 girls attended!

May

We hosted our first Mobile App Development workshop in Miami on May 31. Girls used AppInventor to create mobile apps using drag-and-drop programming blocks.

June

With our partners Hopeline Verizon and Break the Cycle, we hosted two loveisrespect hackathons in Oakland and New York on the same weekend, June 7 and June 8, on opposite coasts! Girls worked in teams with experienced mentors to design, build, and showcase apps that foster healthy relationships.

We partnered with Estella’s Brilliant Bus and Startup Edutech to bring the Tech Innovation Bus Ride. The bus embarked on a seven-city, eleven-day tour through the South from June 27 to July 8. One hundred fifty youth participated in coding classes and Civil Rights History tours on the road trip that made stops in West Palm Beach, FL; Atlanta, GA; Birmingham, AL; Selma, GA; Memphis, TN; Jackson, MS; and New Orleans, LA. Black Girls CODE hosted two Build a Website in a Day workshops during this tour in both Memphis, TN and Jackson, MS.

July

We hosted our last loveisrespect hackathon of the summer in partnership with Verizon Hopeline and Break the Cycle in New Orleans, LA on July 2 and July 3.

Black Girls CODE hosted a workshop and kiosk at the YesWeCode Tech Village at Essence Festival from July 4 to July 6. In addition to our kiosk and MaKey MaKey workshop, Kimberly was featured as a speaker! Thanks Kapor Center for Social Impact for sponsoring us, allowing us to attend Essence Fest. Over 500,000 people attended Essence Music Festival this year!

We hosted a Mobile App Development with AppInventor workshop with partnership from Thoughworks in Chicago on July 12.

We hosted a Summer of Code Game Jam on July 26 in Miami.

I’m Vanessa See, a high school intern working for Black Girls CODE this summer. One of my duties at Black Girls CODE is to engage with our social media audience. I’ll be writing blog posts over the course of the next month to give you an inside view of a “Day in the Life of a BGC Intern” and to recap several of our exciting events this year. Since this is my first post, here’s a little bit about me!

• I’m a rising senior at Lowell High School in San Francisco
  
• I’m an avid reader
  
• I’m on my school’s robotics team, Team 4159 CardinalBotics
  
• I love maps, Murakami novels, Arcade Fire, and The Sims 3
  

I’m super excited to blog for Black Girls CODE! We’ve been really busy this year with a bunch of events across the country, so stay tuned for a recap of all our events!

BlackGirlsCODE
Follow our campaign on  Indiegogo:       
http://igg.me/p/108824?a=620519   

Catching up with more of our very own Tech Diva's and the parents behind them! Devyn (photographed to the left) and mom Tamara answered some of the questions we're all curious to know.


Parent Tamara's Questions:
Why do you support Black Girls CODE?  "I support Black Girls CODE for a number of reasons.  On a personal level, I have spent several years in the high-tech industry and to see any woman of color participating in an engineering capacity is rare.   There are many reasons for this outcome, but at a fundamental level it can only change with a pool of qualified candidates prepared to perform in positions requiring a highly specialized skill set."

Why do you send your daughter to Black Girls CODE workshops?  "I want my daughter to have two things throughout her life, opportunities and options.  You cannot have opportunity or options without access.  Black Girls CODE is doing the work of providing girls of color the critical element of access.  Access to technology and related skills are fundamentals that this group of girls might not otherwise have the chance to explore."

What advice would you tell other parents about Black Girls CODE?  "Participating in Black Girls CODE is a foundational building block that can change a life.  The pipeline that Black Girls CODE is establishing is not only ground breaking, but a 21st Century imperative for establishing competitive skills in a highly evolving workforce.  Participating in Black Girls CODE has become a welcome staple in our daughters curriculum, we highly recommend it."

Tech Diva Devyn's Questions:
What do you love most about Black Girls CODE?  "I like making new friends,  learning new things and I like that everyone helps each other."

What was your favorite Black Girls CODE workshop?  "Video game challenge and learning from Twitter Engineers."

What projects are you working on now or what type of computer projects do you work on at home?  "I like to build web-pages about my favorite subjects, candy and dolphins."

Why would you tell another girl to check out a workshop?  
"It's a lot of fun!  You make new friends and get to do cool stuff that you never thought you could do before."

Tamara later commented:
"Devyn also enjoys robotics and likes to make brushbots (robots made out of tooth brushes), in her spare time.  She also learned how to solder a circuit board.  The tools she learned from participating in Black Girls CODE are helping her in programing her circuit board.  She is captivated by technology, Black Girls CODE planted the seed."

Join our Movement - Get Involved with Black Girls CODE

There are many ways you can help scale our winning model to communities around the world. Here are 3 things you can do right now!

• DONATE: Individuals and businesses alike can support Black Girls CODE’s crowdfunding campaign to educate 2,000 girls in computer programming. Donate now to help the organization launch their 10-city summer workshop series tagged “Summer of CODE 2013 - The Remix”  and increase the number of girls of color in tech. Last day to donate is July 26, 2013. We can reach each student this summer for only $50 each, but they are all worth so much more.
  

• VOTE: Black Girls CODE is one of top three technology education nonprofits nominated to win $50,000 grant by Microsoft’s Azure developer community. Cast your vote now through October 31st, 2013. The nonprofit with the most votes win. Confirm your email to finalize your vote. 
  

• VOLUNTEER: Technical and Nontechnical volunteers are needed to support workshops and other events organized by Black Girls CODE. Sign up to volunteer today. 
  

Thanks for reading! We will highlight exclusive interviews recognizing BGC Tech Divas and their parents until the end of our campaign. Check back for new stories.

BlackGirlsCODE
Follow our campaign on  Indiegogo:       
http://igg.me/p/108824?a=620519   

We recently interviewed one of our very own Tech Divas Rebecca (photographed in the pictured below) and her mom Wilda (photographed in the picture to the left, sitting in the chair). Hoping you'll be influenced by their excitement, we're sharing the chat with you !


Parent Wilda's Questions:
Why do you support Black Girls CODE?
"It is a program that is very much needed to expose our girls to tech,as a creator, not just a consumer.  We need to show and reinforce in our girls that they can be and do anything they want, and anyone who tells them different is afraid that they will succeed and leave them behind."

Why do you send your daughter to Black Girls CODE workshops?"My daughter is very into tech, and classes or workshops are either not local,  or very expensive.  BGC is local. affordable, and a very nurturing environment.  The first time at a workshop we were made to feel like we had always been part of the BGC family.She has made friends with other girls who are into tech."

What advice would you tell other parents about Black Girls CODE?
"If your daughter is into tech, this is the place for her, if she is not into tech, expose her to it, you never know what could happen."


Tech Diva Rebecca's Questions:
What do you love most about Black Girls CODE?
"Meeting other girls who are into Tech."

What was your favorite Black Girls CODE workshop?
"STEM Video Game Challenge"

What projects are you working on now or what type of computer projects do you work on at home?
"Making a game about a soda can named Dud who escaped from his 6-pack and is trying to get away from the Teenagers who are trying to drink him. ( I'm gonna need help coding some of it , hint, hint, hint)"


Why would you tell another girl to check out a workshop?
"It is fun and very interactive"

Join our Movement - Get Involved with Black Girls CODE

There are many ways you can help scale our winning model to communities around the world. Here are 3 things you can do right now!

• DONATE: Individuals and businesses alike can support Black Girls CODE’s crowdfunding campaign to educate 2,000 girls in computer programming. Donate now to help the organization launch their 10-city summer workshop series tagged “Summer of CODE 2013 - The Remix”  and increase the number of girls of color in tech. Last day to donate is July 26, 2013. We can reach each student this summer for only $50 each, but they are all worth so much more.
  

• VOTE: Black Girls CODE is one of top three technology education nonprofits nominated to win $50,000 grant by Microsoft’s Azure developer community. Cast your vote now through October 31st, 2013. The nonprofit with the most votes win. Confirm your email to finalize your vote. 
  

• VOLUNTEER: Technical and Nontechnical volunteers are needed to support workshops and other events organized by Black Girls CODE. Sign up to volunteer today. 
  

Thanks for reading! We will highlight exclusive interviews recognizing BGC Tech Divas and their parents until the end of our campaign. Check back for new stories.

BlackGirlsCODE
Follow our campaign on  Indiegogo:       
http://igg.me/p/108824?a=620519   

We are less than half way through our Black Girls Code- Summer of Code Campaign and it has been an amazing journey!  We hosted our largest workshop yet in Oakland on Saturday June 30th with almost 80 girls in attendance.  Yes 8-0!  Who says girls don't like technology? Fail.  Well they do and they came out in full force on a beautiful Saturday morning for our last Summer Code Party at DeVry University. With the help of almost 30 volunteers we took girls as young as 6 through the Mozilla Webmaker tools such as Hackasaurus and Thimble.  They learned the basics of HTML and CSS and by the smiles on their faces throughout the day had a great time seeing their personal creations come to life.  The 9-11 year olds had a particular fondness for searching Pinterest to discover various fashion and other treasures :-).

It was a busy and exciting day for everyone from the students, to volunteers, to parents.  We captured a short video during the day to save a little bit of the magic.  Some of the photos we captured during the day express the impact of the day on these young future tech stars. 

We have reached almost 100 students so far on our Summer of Code Project, but we are NOT DONE YET. We have already planned our next big event which will be our Tale of 3 Cities Workshop on July 28th in Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Then it's on to Las Vegas on August 11th. But we still have Detroit, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and New York to reach before the end of the summer hits us.  The Beastie Boys said it best---NO SLEEP TILL BROOKLYN! 

Thanks to everyone for your support of our Summer of Code!

BlackGirlsCODE
Follow our campaign on  Indiegogo:       
http://igg.me/p/108824?a=620519   

It's just 4 days before our largest BlackGirlsCODE class so far in our Summer of Code Campaign in San Francisco and I am filled with pride, awe, and gratitude about all BGC has been able to accomplish in only a year since we launched in 2011.  We started with a mission to reach girls from underrepresented communities and to introduce them to careers in technology in a small computer lab in the basement of a community organization in Bayview-Hunters Point, a predominantly African-American neighborhood on the outskirts of the SV gold coast.  Now as we enter our inaugural Summer of Code Campaign, we have more than 100 girls registered for programming workshops in computing, robotics, and tech entrepreneurship in over 7 cities across the United States.  To say that we have accomplished a LOT with very little would be a tremendous understatement.  When we launched in 2011, our organization was largely a bootstrapped effort fueled on the passion and vision of a small group of founders dedicated to changing the face of technology.  It was a prodigious act of fate which brought BlackGirlsCODE to the attention of companies such ThoughtWorks and Google who have supported our programs from the beginning and continue to support our efforts to grow and expand.  

We are looking forward to the Summer of Code workshops as we spread our mission for providing opportunities for girls of color to broaden their ambitions for future careers in tech as both creators and founders.  Our Saturday Build a Webpage class sold out in less than two weeks and we have over 80 girls ages 7-17 registered with many additional students on our waiting list.  The response to BlackGirlsCODE has been A-M-A-Z-I-N-G and we are humbled by the response and support of our community.  But our mission is based on much more than simply teaching girls the basics of computing programming or robotics.  We are dedicated to building not only strong technologists but empowering girls to develop the self-confidence and positive images to become the powerful and enlightened young women that will create positive change in their families, their communities, and our world.  

I truly believe that BlackGirlsCODE will be the "Non-profit the could" and does change the face of this industry and our world. We're just waiting on everyone else to catch up with us and realize it as well.  In the meantime, we have 80 girls waiting and WORK TO DO!  

~Kimberly Bryant
Founder
BlackGirlsCODE
Follow our campaign on  Indiegogo:       
http://igg.me/p/108824?a=620519  

BlackGirlsCODE kicked off our Summer of Code on Saturday June 17th during the 62nd Annual Juneteenth Festival in San Francisco.  We hosted the one day game development class in coordination with the Urban Game Suite which also included workshops during the weekend with famed animator Leo Sullivan the Emmy Award winning animator of Fat Albert, The Hulk, Batman, and the Fantastic Four.  

During this workshop BGC introduced boys and girls as young as 7  to game development utilizing the Microsoft product KODU. We taught the workshop interactively using the PC interface and incorporated pairs programming, and near peer mentors into the mix. In fact in addition to a wonderful group of talented female software engineers from our BGC volunteer team, we had TAs/and mentors from ages 9 to 17 who jumped right in to teach other students the basics of  creating a video game for the xBox.

Kodu is a game development tool which works on both a PC and Xbox via a simple visual programming language. The kids quickly picked up the basics and began coding in no time.  They were able to create their own interactive video games and share them with the class during the final presentations.

This was one of the first classes BGC has taught with a mixed gender focus and it went smashingly well.  In fact we even got the parents (and grandparents to stick around for class and join in the experience of seeing their kids get excited about programming and engineering.  The best quote of the day by far was the comment by one of our students at the end of the day.  He asked "so is this what an software engineer does? Then I'm interested in being an engineer".  

What a rewarding way to end the day and an exciting beginning to our 90 day campaign to introduce more than 200 kids of color to computer programming and technology in 7 cities.  Our journey has just begun and we looking forward to every step!

Happy Father's Day and Happy Juneteenth to all of our friends and supporters!

~BlackGirlsCODE
Follow our campaign on  Indiegogo:       
http://igg.me/p/108824?a=620519 

                                                                 

In the beginning...April 2011 seems just like yesterday when myself and an amazing group of THREE (yes you read that correctly) friends pooled together our time and personal resources to plant the seeds for BlackGirlsCODE.  Our beginnings as a non-profit organization focusing on introducing girls of color to careers in technology through classes in computer programming were both humble and sincere.  Our team included myself; an electrical engineer by trade, a business colleague and friend from the biotech field, another friend and business associate with a science background who was once a middle school teacher, and a lone Code for America Fellow our only "true" coder who we relied on immensely! But although we may have been lacking in numbers and been slight newbies in the coding skills, we made up for these deficiencies with our passion and dedication.  We all shared a passion to expose girls of color to the many opportunities which abound in STEM fields especially technology. To be honest we found it unbelievable that when we launched BlackGirlsCODE there were no other organizations anywhere focused solely on training girls of color about computer programming and technology. We were the first and we wanted to expose girls from underrepresented communities to the opportunities which existed just a few miles away from our Bayview-Hunter's Point classroom in Silicon Valley.  We were determined to make it happen so we got to work and bootstrapped our first pilot class in October.  When I look back on those early days I truly believe we were moved by passion and driven by vision.  We planned for only 6 girls in our pilot class and saw our numbers grow three times that during our first few classes.  The girls kept coming and amazed us with their ability to grasp the complex topics.  They literally took to programming as they say "like fish to water".  They inspired us to keep going.

We have been truly blessed to see our program, started from such humble beginnings, continue to grow and expand.  We launched a pilot class in Chicago in May and saw our June "Build a Webpage in a Day Class" in San Francisco sell out in just 2 weeks with more than 50 girls and a huge waiting list.  We were honored to be selected as a Google RISE recipient in 2012 and were very lucky that progressive companies and organizations such as ThoughtWorks and others, saw the potential in our work and have offered their resources and facilities to help us grow. We are truly grateful for this support as well as the many volunteers who volunteer their time as mentors in our classes in multiple cities.  But there is still so much work to do.  We are still primarily operated as a grassroots organization and although we continue to see exponential growth and demand for our programs we have struggled to secure the funding we need to support our girls.  We launched our 2012 Summer of Code to serve two parallel goals: to meet the growing demand for our unique and disruptive program model by expanding beyond the San Francisco bay area and teaching more than 300 students the basics of computer programming; and to engage our base of supporters from the GROUND UP to help create meaningful change for girls in our society.  As the founder of BlackGirlsCODE I continue to be encouraged each and every day by the girls we serve and steadfastly believe that we have truly MADE A DIFFERENCE. There are certainly many worthy causes in the "sea of turmoil" in our world today.  Yet I believe strongly that it is both important and necessary that we invest in our youth and our girls.  These young bright minds are a precious and undervalued commodity that we must continue to cultivate and grow.  They are the future.  They are the hope.  They are the DREAMS OF TOMORROW. 

With gratitude,
~Kimberly Bryant

Founder, BlackGirlsCODE