Toronto (Canada) – Nearly 5,000 girls in grades 6-9, recently participated in hackathons held by Hackergal, across ten provinces in Canada. Hackergal is a non-for-profit organization that aims to get girls excited about coding. Fasken has been a supporter of Hackergal right from its inception.
By teaching girls at a young age that computer science is fun, interesting and matters Hackergal hopes to help close the gender gap in technology. Participating schools are provided with a software platform and lessons to teach basic coding in advance to a select group of girls. Then at a full-day hackathon, the students get an assignment to build an interactive story online, using the coding concepts they’ve already learned. Attendees gain confidence in the tech space and realize this is not just something that boys do. It’s also hopefully the impetus for them to choose computer science as their electives in grade 10, opening the way to a future in technology.
The program is clearly gaining traction. The first hackathon was hosted in Toronto in December 2015. Only 25 girls attended. Last week, three years later, nearly 200 times that amount participated, and now the goal is for 50,000 girls to be participating annually by 2021.
Craig Brown, a Toronto Partner, has been on the board of directors of Hackergal since the get-go and Fasken has been its lead counsel. We are proud to be part of an organization making such an impactful contribution to young girls in Canada, some of whom will become our future leaders in the space.
Bravo Hackergal.
To view the gallery of projects created by girls across Canada in the most recent hackathon, please click here.
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