Teens Inspired to Join the Tech World
To get young children interested in something, or if they say they want to be something at a young age, it is important to expose them to that profession as soon as possible. Getting girls interested in technology and entrepreneurship is the same way.
The Huffington Post featured an article on a group of 17 high school girls who gathered inside of a conference room at Rockefeller Center and were talking about their start-up plans. One team planned on engineering pairs of high-heeled shoes they call Taussure (a play on the French word for shoe) that would convert to flats.
The girls were part of an experimental summer program arranged by the MIT Enterprise Forum. Which is an organization which follows the theory that says, “Introduce girls to tech entrepreneurship early on, and you’ll ultimately see more women dotting the tech world’s mostly male landscape.”
The chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum’s New York chapter, Lori Hoberman told The Huffington Post that she loves promoting woman entrepreneurs because “we don’t have enough of them.”
“I thought; we should focus on girls. The younger you go, the less the fear,” she said.
She hopes to expand her program to two weeks and have 30 female students next summer. According to The Huffington Post, she worked with NYC Promise, which is a nonprofit that promotes STEM initiatives, and choose a group of girls from five high schools for the classes they provide. Aprommixmately 50 students apply for a spot in the program, but only 17 are selected to participate in the program.
On the last day of this year’s program, the girls who thought of the idea for Taussure had earned top points in the pitch competition and had won Kindles as their prizes.
To read the full story, go to Huffingtonpost.com.