Letter: Girl Scout Encourages Bay Area Girls To Pursue Tech

A reader submission from the Singhal family:

PLEASANTON, CA — Recently, Suhani Singhal earned her Girl Scout Gold Award for her project, 1000 Bits of Hope. The mission of her project is to provide girls with inspiration and access to start their own computer science journeys. The idea came when she took a couple of Computer Science classes, one of them the AP Computer Science class offered at Amador Valley High School. Although she loved the class and the material that was taught, she had wished to see more girls taking interest in this field. She asked herself questions like, “Why weren’t more girls participating in these classes?” and “How could I help solve this problem?”. As a result, she decided to create a platform where girls could learn more about women in tech and be encouraged to pursue this field!

One of the major reasons that girls don’t pursue this field is because they don’t see someone who looks like them: women in tech who can serve as their role models and mentors. Why would girls want to pursue a field where they would be a minority? As a result, Suhani decided to host events and create a video series to give girls the opportunity to gain more exposure about the industry and learn about the unique stories of women in tech. She held two Majoring in Computer Science events where girls had the opportunity to meet and network with women role models and also participate in engaging activities! Each event consisted of a panel of females in tech, a key-note speaker, and CS-activities teaching fundamental concepts like coding in Python and binary numbers. The first event was held at the Technovation World Pitch where girls from countries all over the world (including India, Cambodia, Kenya, and Canada) attended. The Second event was held at the Google Community Center in San Francisco where approximately 70 underrepresented youth from inner-city Oakland and SF participated.

In addition to these events, Suhani created a 7-part video series called “Super Bytes with Suhani Singhal” with the purpose of giving every girl the opportunity to explore the stories of successful women in tech. The video series is accessible to everyone, no matter where they live or what hardships they may face. Each video highlights a different role model's story and goes in depth on her journey, obstacles, advice, career and more! The goal is that girls learn helpful tips and advice, different tech-based career options, and obstacles these women have overcome.

During the shelter-in-place, Suhani hopes that girls will take advantage of the video series which she recently made public, so they can continue to learn more about the tech-field while at home. She also created the website www.1000bitsofhope.org during the Coronavirus epidemic, to continue to spread awareness about this problem and give girls a platform to join a community, attend more events, and view the videos!

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