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Girl Scouts and Four Athens Are Teaching Girls to Code


Girl Scouts of Historic Georgia and Four Athens will host a coding workshop for girls ages 10–15 this Saturday, Jan. 16 from 9 a.m.–noon at the Athens Service Center, 185 Newton Bridge Road. Scouts will learn with Hackety Hack, an education tool designed to teach the popular coding language Ruby on Rails.

This is GSHG’s first partnership with Four Athens. “I want to contribute toward a culture of nonprofit organizations working together in our community,” GSHG Program Manager Erica Strout said about the collaboration.

It is also Four Athens’ first girl-centered workshop. Their weekend workshops for local elementary and middle schools often enjoy a good showing of female participants, Four Athens’ Tamara Neff said, but “there is an onus upon the tech fields to make engaging women and people of color in the community a priority.”

Four Athens also hosts a monthly Women in Tech get-together, and the Girl Scouts also have other programs for students to explore science, tech, engineering and math careers—fields that are often dominated by white men. “Empowering girls with STEM education is important to us.” Strout said. “Those careers are growing very quickly, more quickly than any other field. We want to see girls and women take part in that.”

Learning to Code with Hackety Hack is open to all registered girl scouts. Register by emailing estrout@gshg.org. GSHG membership is $15, a Ruby patch is included in the $50 class fee, and financial aid is available.

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