Hello everybody, it’s Ruby. I hope you are having a lovely week so far. We did our usual check-in sharing one challenge and a high point from the last week before we worked on our presentations for the Go Girl graduation ceremony.

We had a discussion about what makes a good presentation. Abisola used the points from this discussion to deliver a presentation on how to deliver a presentation.

We got to critique Abisola’s presentation. We then we gave a trial run of our presentations, and we were given tips on how to improve them.

I’m looking forward to the final ceremony next week! See you on the next blog!

Hi everybody, it’s Ruby.

I hope you are all having a lovely week so far. We did our usual check-in before we worked on our individual projects. I’ve finished the content of my site, and I will work on the appearance before I complete the site.

Abbey worked on her project adding further complexities to the game. We both gave a small presentation about what we accomplished in the workshop.

Next week, it will be the last proper Go Girl session, and we will be working on our presentations for the graduation ceremony.

I’ll see you on the next post!’

Hello everybody, it’s Ruby again. I hope you are all having a wonderful week so far.

We did our usual check-in before we continued working on our individual projects. I worked on the content to each of my pages today. Abbey worked on her game and Paula offered us advice on areas we were finding difficult.

We gave a 2 minute presentation on the progress of our projects
Next week, we will be working on our presentation slides for the graduation ceremony.

I’ll see you on the next blog post!’

Hello everybody, it’s Ruby again. I hope you’re having a lovely week so far. We did our usual check-in before we continued working on our individual projects. Paula showed Abbey a new platform that was more suited to her initial ideas, the MIT App Inventor. It can be accessed http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ . What was interesting about this website, was that is was very similar to the way we write Scratch code. As there may not be much time to learn a new system, Abbey decided to continue with her Scratch game.

I continued working on the HTML layout using a text-editor called Notepad.

At the end of the session, we gave out a short presentation about the progress of our projects and what we plan to do next.
I’ll see you on another blog post!’

Hello, everyone, it’s Ruby again. I hope you’re having a lovely week so far. We did our check-in before we continued working on our individual projects. I showed one of the staff my wire-frame sketches for the soda bread website and I also wrote some more content for the site. I used a text-editor called Notepad for HTML. Eventually, I will copy my written HTML content onto WordPress to save time.

Abbey had come up with a new concept for an educational grocery shopping game for primary school children on Scratch. In this session Abbey got very close to completing the game, so will be working on how to make the game more challenging.

After we had our 5 minute break, we went on to Python. We learnt how to drawing with turtle. A turtle is a black arrow that moves around a screen. We learnt how to draw a square using Turtle.

I’m looking forward to next week and I’ll see you on another blog post!

Over the next coming weeks until the end of the programme the Go Girl participants will be focusing on their projects. Below is what Ruby mentioned about the status of her project.

Hello everybody, it’s Ruby again. I hope you’re having a lovely week so far. We did our usual check-in before we worked on our projects. I designed the logo for my soda bread website using LogoMakr  I took a screenshot of my logo before I discovered that you had to pay for a high-resolution download. You can only download a low resolution version for free. I have set up the website using WordPress and I will use HTML to create the content.  

We went through the Arrays and Loops exercise homework before we finished the session.

Abbey had come up with the idea of creating an app that organises your makeup. Paula found an online website that provides a platform for app building called Ionic which can be found at https://ionicframework.com/. By the end of the class, Abbey realised that the functionality of Ionic was not compatible with her ideas. Abbey decided that her project would instead be a game, and that she would go away and think of a new idea!

Until next time!

This week, we are at it again with Python. The young women have really taken to the programming language and we (the team), are sure that it has something to do with the fact that we had taken our time with the Pseudo code and that there are very many similarities between this and Python. Initially we weren’t sure it was going to be well received, but as each week goes by, the ladies are completing homework on Python and challenging themselves further. This is what Ruby had to say about the session.

Hello everybody, it’s Ruby again. I hope you are all having a lovely week so far. We had a visitor, a careers advisor from Activate Learning to come and see what Go Girl does. We did our usual check-in before we went through the IF and IF-ELSE exercises that we did for homework.
Afterwards, we learnt about arrays in Python. An array is a list of values with the same data type. Each value in an array is represented by an index number. The first value in an array is always represented by the index [0].

We did two exercises. The first exercise was to make an array called names to store a list of 5 names and print out each name.The second exercise was to make another array called numbers to store a list of 7 integers of our choice. We printed the third item in our arrays and the second to the last item in our arrays.
Next, we used the .append, .pop, .insert and .remove commands. We were given a challenge to use the sort, ascending and descending commands.
In this session, we also learnt about loops. A loop is a sequence of instructions that is continually repeated until it reaches a certain condition. For example:for x in range(0, 5):print(‘hello’)

In the second half of the session we worked our own individual projects before we received a letter about the Go Girl graduation ceremony happening on the 19th June. I’m looking forward to the next session and I’ll see you on another blog post!’

Hello everybody, it’s Ruby again. I hope you all had a brilliant Easter!

We did our usual check-in before we went through our Python exercises homework which was set before the break last week. The first exercise was to write a program that asks you to type in a number. It multiplies the number you enter by 10 and prints the result. We had to convert string input values to integers using int. We also typed in a decimal number, but realised it gave out an error message because a floating-point number isn’t compatible with multiplying by an integer (whole number).

The second exercise was to rewrite a program to ask the student to type in their age. The third exercise was to write a program that checks if two numbers entered by a user are equal. If they are equal, display, “They are equal” else; display, “They are not equal”. The fourth exercise was to write a program that checks the age of a voting person. If they are above the age of 18, display, “You are eligible to vote”. If they are under 18, display, “You are not yet eligible to vote”. We extended our program to also check if the person is registered. 

Afterwards, we went to the Natural History Museum. I had already been there a few times with my family before, but it was nice to go around with the Go Girl participants. We were each given a sheet to answer questions about the museum, which helped to look at the museum in a different way. I had a lovely time there.

I’m looking to the session next week and I’ll see you on another blog post!

‘Hello everyone, it’s Ruby again.

In this session, we learnt about data types and using the input function. Every value in a programming language has a data type. A data type tells the computer what kind of value to expect.

There are 4 data types:

1. Integers – They are whole numbers. There is no limit to how long an integer value can be as long as your computer has enough memory space. Integers are written as int. For example: print(6) print(246810121416182022242628303234363840 + 1)
2. Floating-point numbers – They are decimal numbers. Float represents these type of numbers. For example: print(4.2 + 5) 
3. Strings – They are a set of characters. The string type is represented by str.
4. Boolean – This type may have one or two values: True or False. The type is called bool. We use Boolean values in programming to make comparisons and to control the flow of the program. For example: print(5 == 5)print(5 == 6)

You can check the data type of a variable. For example: the_value = 10print(type(the_value))<type ‘int’>

The difference between a single equals sign and a double equals sign is that a single sign is an assignment operator, whereas two equal signs are a comparison operator. 

The == operator is one of the 6 comparison operators; 

• x != y – x is not equal to y
• x > y – x is greater than y
• x < y – x is less than y
• x >= y – x is greater than or equal to y
• x <= y – x is less than or equal to y

After the break, we learnt how to use the Input function. Since we started learning Python, we have been using the output function print (). The print function tells the computer to display certain values. The input function, represented by input (), accepts user input from an device such as a keyboard. It converts the input in to a string and returns the value. For example: name = input (‘What is your name?’) print (‘Hi’, name, ‘, nice to meet you!’)

At the end of the session, we were given homework to do exercises on our sheets. I enjoyed the session. Go Girl will be back on Wednesday 24th.

I hope you all have a lovely Easter and I shall see you on the next blog post!’ 

Hello everybody, it’s Ruby again.

I hope you are all having a lovely week so far.

We started of the session with our usual weekly check-in before we talked about the timelines for our individual projects.

In this session, we learnt Python. Python is a general purpose text-based programming language. Python is widely used because you can get things done with less code than other programming languages. To get started, we downloaded the latest Python Windows installer from https://www.python.org/. After it was installed on our computers, we opened Python from our start menus. The Python shell is part of the integrated development environment.

The 3 greater-than signs (>>>) are called the prompt. We typed in ‘>>> print (‘Hello World’) on the installed software. If you want to save the code, you have to copy the text and paste it on to a Word document.
We used an online editor called Repl.it to be able to run python code. It was easy to sign up to, and I did so using my Google account. The site allows you to save your codes to your account. The link to the online editor is: https://repl.it/

• Variables are a place to store information such as numbers and text. It is also like a label for something. For example, to create a variable named ‘ruby’, we use an equals sign and then tell the program what information the variable should be the label for. Example: ruby = 100 print (ruby). This is assigning a value to a variable.
• A string is a sequence of characters e.g. words or sentences. In Python, we create a string by putting single or double quotes around the text. For example, ruby = (“Why do birds fly?”), then to print what has been assigned to ruby, we type the command, print (ruby)
• We did two exercises. The first exercise was to create a variable called “course” and assign the string value “python”. I created another variable called “rating” and assigned it with an integer value. I used the number 50. The second exercise was to write a program displaying ‘I love Python programming.’
  We were given homework to do exercises 3-6 on our Python sheets. I thought the session was fun.

It was Ashmita’s last week before she goes on maternity leave, so at the end of the session, we all had a slice of cake whilst Ashmita received presents for the baby.
Next week, we will be learning how operators work in Python.

I’m looking forward to the session and I’ll see you on another blog post!

Hello everybody, it’s Ruby again.

I hope you are all having a lovely week so far.

We did a quick check-in before we gave our speeches about our individual projects to everyone. I have a few options for a project. One may be to revamp a website run by Herbal, Medicine, Naturopathy and Iridology practitioner. I will be using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Another option is to work my own website showcasing photographs I have taken over the years.

We each filled out a sheet about our plans for the projects which followed a project life cycle addressing the points in the image below.

The timeline for our projects is from 27th March to 5th June.

During the session, I compared the site’s layout to The National Institute of Medical Herbalists website. https://www.nimh.org.uk/ I did this to get a feel for the style of websites within this industry, and find a completed site that I can benchmark the site I am building against. On the NIMH website, I liked the overall layout and that each page has a different background image for the headings.

It was one of the staff members’ birthday last week and to celebrate, we each had a slice of Victoria Sponge cake. It was tasty!

I’m looking forward to next week’s session and I’ll see you on another blog post!

Welcome back everyone! It’s been quite the week in Oxford so far. We’ve experienced our first snowfall, which was beautiful to see and distracted us oh so briefly from the planning for this week’s session!

We decided to switch gears this week , and pivot from Pseudocode and HTML to some lessons in finance. Not before checking in on the girls’ homework though! After our weekly check-in we went through the homework problems set to challenge the Go_Girls while at home. We dicussed the solutions that the girls had come to, and happy to report success on all counts! It was great to see the different approaches to the same problem – a fantastic opportunity for the young women to see how creative coders can be, and how each coder can almost have their own unique signature on the piece of code that they write!

Examples of different approaches to pseudocodes for printing a pass or fail message for a particular grade

After a well-earned break, our young women played a great game that our new youth worker Abisola (read her bio here), had found on the excellent resource put together on the Barclays Life Skills website .

The game provided the young women with a set amount of money that they had each month, and then took them through various choices of debit, credit and life events as the young women rolled their way around the board. We covered wide ranging topics from what saving can look like, payday loans, and challenged the young women to think about how they would make choices with money. It turned out to be quite competitive game as the young women worked to be the one with the most saving by the end of the month, providing some entertaininment while being highly informative along the way.

We will pick back up next week with another session on finance – see you next week!

Hello, my name is Ruby P. and I’m new to the Go Girl project. I’m a guest blogger for today. We’ve just finished our first session and it was fun. I got to meet all the girls who are also taking part in the project.

Before the session, a few of us went to job fair at the BlackBird Leys Tech Campus. It was a great experience to meet people and talk to them about about the Go_Girl program.

First, we folded one paper into half. On one side, we wrote our name and on the other side, we wrote a word beginning with the letter of our names which described us. I was Respectful Ruby.

The next task we did was go on a website called ‘I Could’. We took a quiz which described our personalities and which jobs would come up. Our result would be an animal. I was a polar bear and one of the jobs that came up was a web content editor. The funniest result was a clownfish! If you’re interested, this is where you take the test: https://icould.com/

Afterwards, all of us were split into pairs and Colleen came up with 5 questions each. I would write down my partner’s answers and she would write down mine. Questions included our favourite food, the most random food we’ve had, what our dream job would be, a charity or a cause we are passionate about and a thing that annoys us the most and what we could do to sort it out. It was fascinating that many of us have a charity or a cause that we are passionate about.

We went through some important group rules before we finished the session.

I’m looking forward to doing some coding next week, and I’ll see you all again on another blog post!

This week we had our first 2018/19 Go_Girl session – a Meet and Greet for our new cohort of young women. Staff members had an opportunity to introduce themselves and share a bit about their personal journeys and our new Go_Girls shared some of their goals and interests with us. Some are keen to develop web design skills building on previous experiences gained in courses on HTML and CSS from Code Academy. Others are interested in photography and creating apps to make life easier while also working to get GCSEs and progress to A-levels. It was a real pleasure getting to know the young women and we are looking forward to working with them and helping them to create their desired projects and plan pathways for transition into education, employment, training or volunteer work.

If you’re not familiar with the Go_Girl Code+Create programme, check out our video at https://gogirloxford.org/2016/09/15/1175/ and keep checking our blog site for regular updates.

After our reunion with the young women from last year’s cohort, we have started to recruite this year’s participants. We are thrilled that the Go_Girl project will re-start its weekly sessions in the Autumn with a new cohort of young women and can’t wait to meet them! Over the summer we came up with lots of new ideas for coding activities and look forward to sharing them with the young women.

We are delighted that Colleen, who came along to the reunion last week, will be joining the team this year as our new youth worker and project officer. Welcome Colleen!

More updates to follow soon…

This week the Go_Girls and staff members came together for an afternoon of pizza and good conversation. It was exciting to hear about the education and career plans of the young women. They are pursuing a variety of options including pediatric first aid courses, social care, and youth and community development. One of the young women plans to continue developing her knitting business while she attends college while another is learning how to drive so she can become more independent. Others shared their recent experiences of applying for jobs and apprenticeships.

We are thrilled to announce that JJ, Go_Girl participant, creator of the Go_Girl mascot and freelance designer/animator, has been accepted onto a Masters course for Games Design and Development at the National Film & Television School! She plans to work in industry after she earns her degree. We look forward to seeing her new creations!

We are extremely proud of each and every one of our Go_Girls and will continue to support and encourage them as they pursue their goals.

After months of hard work, learning (and fun, of course!) the Go_Girl Awards Ceremony had finally arrived! This evening would give us a chance to celebrate all of the achievements that the girls have made over the past year, and hear about their amazing final projects! A very happy occasion indeed!

The evening kicked off with an inspiring speech from Melanie Jewell, Oxfordshire County Council youth worker and unofficial Go_Girl Queen ❤ Mel’s journey to where she is today is incredibly moving and a real triumph over adversity – there was hardly a dry eye left in the house after she’d finished her story, and paid tribute to the accomplishments of this year’s Go_Girl group. The Go_Girl project would be nothing without Mel and all of her hard work!

Then we were onto the girls’ own presentations. The build-up to this moment had been rather nerve-filled for many, but all of the young women conquered their nerves and delivered powerful speeches to the packed room. Lots of friends, family and other supporters had turned out to cheer the girls on!

The Go_Girls bravely shared the motivation for their projects, which included their own experiences with mental health difficulties. One of the Go_Girls had created a game where players can defeat different mental health ‘monsters’, as seen above. A team of two Go_Girls had also created a website to raise awareness of domestic violence, an issue very close to their hearts.

Another Go_Girl had created a game to raise awareness of animal protection issues. The game enabled people to learn more about different dog breeds. The very cute pictures of dogs got more then a few ‘Awwwws’ from the audience!

The hard work that all of the Go_Girls have put into their projects was palpable – a wide variety of IT skills have been learnt over the past year in order to make their plans a reality. Some of the young women had put CSS and HTML into practice in order to build websites, whilst others had learnt how to use app prototyping programmes. One Go_girl had mastered Unity in order to build a fantastic game featuring her own self-designed animations.

Following the presentations the Go_Girls were invited back on stage to receive their awards. It’s been a fantastic year, and the awards are very well deserved. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for these amazing young women, and it has been a privilege to work alongside them the past year.

At the beginning of the month the world celebrated Autism Awareness Day. Autism is a topic of great importance to the Go_Girl team, especially due to the fact that a number of the Go_Girls identify as autistic. Today we were lucky to have some presentations from the Go_Girl group about autism, neurodiversity and what it is like to be autistic.

There are around 700,000 people on the autistic spectrum in the UK, which is more than 1 in 100 of the population. It is so important that awareness is raised so that the world knows more about the positive aspects of autism, as well as what can be done to support those experiencing it. Autism is very individual, and varies hugely between different people. No two autistic people are alike, but that is not represented enough in mainstream media.

In particular, the group was amazed to learn that girls with autism largely ‘fly under the radar’ and remain undiagnosed for far longer than boys. This is an issue of great importance, because without a diagnosis it is difficult to access extra support. For example, autistic young women are prone to developing eating disorders as a way of controlling the confusing world around them. However, the link between autism and eating disorders is only just starting to be recognised. Some of the Go_Girls bravely shared the challenges that they had faced with their autism. Bullying, lack of school support, struggling with loud noises and unexpected changes, social isolation and feeling misunderstood were issues raised in their speeches.

However, when young women with autism are respected, understood and given the support they need they can flourish. We watched a fantastic video all about the only state school for girls with autism in the UK. The girls in this mini documentary had been able to pursue their passions in an accepting and welcoming environment. It meant so much to hear from the Go_Girls that they felt this way in the Go_Girl group. In particular, they said that being listened to is so important and they felt that the team really tried to hear what they were trying to say. Referring to autism as an example of ‘neurodiversity’ moves away from seeing it as an isolated ‘learning difficulty’ towards celebrating it as part of a more inclusive neurological spectrum.

Luckily, the world is waking up and becoming better informed about autism. JP Morgan, for example, is specifically seeking to employ autistic people because of the passion, focus and aptitude that they have. A survey by the National Autistic Society found that only 16% of autistic people are in full-time work, despite 77% saying that they would like to be employed. Hopefully this will change in the coming years so that more autistic people can have the opportunity to pursue a fulfilling career. Here at Go_Girl we will be supporting each other, no matter where we are in the spectrum of neurodiversity, to make our future goals happen.

It’s hard to believe that we are approaching the last stages of the Go_Girl 2017-18 program! The time has flown by and so much has been achieved. However, we all want to make sure that the progress that has been made is sustainable once the official sessions end. Applying and securing a job is a goal that many of the group would like to make a reality in the coming months. So we decided that today’s session would tackle interview skills, as well as continuing with our projects.

Interviewing for a position can be a hugely daunting experience. The Go_Girl team all had stories and tips to share about how best to approach the challenge. We talked about what to include in a cover letter, and how to prepare for the big day. A survey by the site totaljobs found that people’s most feared interview questions include ‘Why should we hire you?’, ‘Tell me about yourself’, and ‘What is your biggest weakness?’. We went through how to answer these kinds of queries. Most importantly of all, don’t forget to breathe and take your time. It isn’t a weakness to show that you are thinking through the question – there’s no need to rush to fill the space.

The Go_Girl group are continuing to power ahead with their projects. 7 weeks to go until the final presentations! The group will be supporting each other every step of the way.

The Go_Girls continue to keep up the momentum and push forward with their projects! Some are adding to and fine-tuning their work. Others are nearly done with their original projects and are creating an additional one to complement the original work. Slide presentations are also being developed to accompany projects.

Project presentation time is fast approaching and the Go_Girls are a bit nervous.  However, they are also excited about showcasing and discussing their work! There will be a variety of projects to exhibit, including a book review app, a game intended to educate and help people with mental illness, and a game designed to teach people to be patient and aware of their surroundings as they manipulate the character to jump over numerous obstacles. These are just a few of the meaningful projects being created. Stayed tuned for more updates on their progress!

With the Easter break just over the horizon, the whole team felt extra motivated this week to make good headway with their projects. However, keeping up the momentum on longer term initiatives can sometimes be tricky. Life throws curveballs when you least expect it, and it can be hard to stay motivated in the face of unexpected obstacles.

We hope that taking part in Go_Girl builds resilience, which is an essential skill in today’s turbulent world. Working on individual passion projects, as the Go_Girls do, can give a sense of purpose that is very sustaining. The process of creating and succeeding in an individual endeavour can build self-esteem. It also helps to foster problem solving skills when things don’t go to plan! Being part of the Go_Girl team also means being part of a supportive and encouraging social network that is always there to cheer you on!

The projects are developing wonderfully, as is all of our resilience! One Go_Girl worked on modelling characters for her game on Unity. Another added a ‘word of the day’ feature to her book review app. Other Go_Girls got their websites up and running. It was a great week full of progress before a well earned Easter week off filled with chocolatey goodness.

With almost 2 months to go until the final ceremony, the Go_Girls are hard at work on their individual projects. These range from a game in Unity to websites, to apps, and even games in Scratch. To give the young women some practice with public speaking and presentation of their work, we spent some time on some speaking games! It was exciting to see the young women think about how best to present and talk about their work, and we also challenged them to do some creative story telling on the spot. Making use of a random word generator, each young woman was given two words that they had to weave into a story on the spot – it definitely made for some interesting tales! It’s absolutely fantastic to see how far some of these young women have come in terms of public speaking – some who weren’t even willing to introduce themselves at the start of the year nearly had us in splits of laughter with their witty storytelling.

The bulk of the sessions were devoted to work on on their projects, which are all coming along at a great pace. The range of creativity and coding techniques is allowing the young women to showcase their interests and designs. While some are tackling more complex code, those that are nearing the completion of their initial ideas are now working on adding more complexity in order to really push their limits. We are really excited by all the progress and look forward to seeing what else the young women can achieve!

One of the key issues that the Go_Girl project aims to shed light on is the lack of women pursuing STEM study and careers. Despite the growing amount of research that explores this problem, we need to delve deeper into how class, race, sexuality and (dis)ability intersect with gender to multiply the disadvantage that some young women can face in accessing STEM-related opportunities.

From: XKCD

Today the Go_Girl team was lucky to receive a visit by Dr Barker, who has faced many barriers throughout her career in STEM, but who has also fought to overcome and challenge these obstacles.  She currently manages the Centre for Applied Superconductivity and has been awarded a prestigious Point of Light award by the Prime Minister’s office, recognising her work for the LGBT+ community. Dr Barker, who identifies as a trans-female, came in to talk to us about her journey from school to Oxford University.

In the open and honest conversation, she highlighted how she first felt like school really wasn’t for her. Yet she persevered, completing first a foundation degree and then going on to become a professional of all things plasma in engineering. She spoke of the struggles she faced in her transition, and the continuing struggles she sees all women face in STEM fields. She also pointed out that where you come from, or how you identify, you should never get in the way of following your dreams. The hard work you do is what should set you apart.

We were so inspired by Dr Barker’s talk. In particular, some of the group who identify as members of the LGBT+ community themselves thanked her for giving them a voice. With everyone still processing everything that Dr Barker had said, it took a little longer than usual to get into our group work. However, soon we were back into the swing of things, and motivated to follow in her footsteps and keep pushing the barriers to STEM down! The time seems to be flying by, and the final presentations are fast approaching. We can’t wait to show you all the fantastic work that the team has been doing over the course of the programme.

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘apprenticeship’? Do certain careers come to mind? Or a certain type of person? How do you view apprenticeships in general? With this week being National Apprenticeship week we started off our Go_Girl sessions with group discussions exploring these questions, in the hope of challenging some of the misconceptions about this type of education. We also watched this video on the ‘Amazing Apprenticeships’ website:

Many of the Go_Girl group had heard of apprenticeships, but were surprised to see the variety of opportunities available. We also talked about traineeships, which some of the group had not heard of. Traineeships provide high quality work experience alongside support in gaining English and Maths skills. They often progress onto apprenticeships, and can be a great way to get a ‘foot in the door’. Together, we explored the Workfinder web app from Founders4Schools, which offers young people the opportunity to search for jobs, traineeships and apprenticeships near where they live. Next, we all had a go at signing up to the Government’s apprenticeship finding website, which helps you to look for opportunities in your area. There was a lot on offer in the Oxfordshire area, from hospitality and hairdressing to animal rescue.

The government wants to see 3 million young people training as apprentices by 2020 – perhaps some of the Go_Girl team will be part of this movement!

After a break and some cake to celebrate two birthdays in the group, we carried on working on our projects. The Go_Girls are putting in so much hard work to make their projects a reality, even working on them in their spare time where possible. Not everyone has Internet access at home, so some of the young women have been coming into the Education department on extra days to put in the hours on their initiatives. One of the Go_Girls is busy modelling her game character on Unity at the moment – impressive stuff!

The ‘Beast from the East’ was in full force this week, smothering Oxford in a blanket of fresh snowy powder blown in by icy winds. Sadly the Wednesday session had to be cancelled due to road safety concerns, but the Tuesday group managed to meet before the big freeze!

We started the workshop this week with another fantastic TedTalk, this time by Reshma Saujani – founder of Girls Who Code.

In this talk Saujani explores the way that society’s normative expectations of femininity shape girls to seek perfection, rather than to be brave. She believes that learning to code offers girls a chance to be brave and reshape their understanding of their own abilities and what girls can do as a whole. We all agreed with her point that coding can be frustrating at times – it often takes many tries until the code will finally work. However, this iterative process of tweaking and tinkering with whichever language you are programming in is an essential part of the coding process – you need to become comfortable with ‘failure’ as in fact this is how you learn and eventually succeed.

Today the Go_Girl group also got to try out high fidelity prototyping using Axure RP. One of the Go_Girls is creating a mobile app for her book reviews. It was fantastic to see her ideas come to life on the screen. We are all looking forward to trying out the app ourselves in the coming weeks.

Go_Girl is, as the name suggests, a project specifically for female-identifying young people. By its very nature, then, Go_Girl is built on the feminist notion that there is value in a women-only, peer supportive space. The program also recognises that gender, whilst always intersecting with class, race and (dis)ability, shapes young people’s technological and educational opportunities. Young women continue to be underrepresented in STEM fields and careers. Go_Girl hopes to explore the challenges girls face, and benefits they gain, in interacting with technology. Whilst Go_Girl is therefore feminist to its core, there is a tendency for this to be forgotten when we are all busy learning how to use prototyping platforms and design games on Unity.

The session today, therefore, aimed to bring the concept of feminism to the fore. We kicked things off with the iconic TedTalk given by the inimitable Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, entitled ‘We should all be feminists‘.

Watching the video sparked some really interesting conversations about how gender norms have affected each of our lives. Everyone had very different experiences to share. The Go_Girls have had to overcome numerous challenges and adversities in their lives to get where they are today. They have moved from seeing themselves as victims to identifying as survivors, and are becoming agents for social change. Bringing about this transition in the young women’s lives is at the heart of Go_Girl.

For some of the Go_Girls, the word ‘feminist’ has negative connotations – they argued that it seems outdated in this day and age, a bit aggressive even. This also lead to a really engaging debate about why the word feminist is still important to some of the other young women, and how the battle for equality is far from over. The word feminist highlights the lack of power women currently hold in comparison to men. We can use the word ‘equalitist’ when true equity has been achieved. But with the pay gap far from being closed, amongst many other issues, that still seems a long way off! It’s great to be able to share our thoughts and feelings in the supportive environment that Go_Girl provides.

With everyone fired up after these discussions we then moved on to working on our individual projects. There was lots of game design going on – it’s great to see how creative programming can be! We all can’t wait to give the games a go once they are finished!

On February 6th the Go_Girl team headed off to the ninth annual ‘Careers Fest’ at the Oxford MINI Plant. Over all, we had a great experience. There were lots of interesting companies to talk to. UK Atomic Energy Agency, Microsoft, Sophos, Nielsen and Thames Valley Police were just some of the organisations in attendance. The MINI displays were pretty cool too!

Whilst it was an interesting experience attending the fair, some of the employers proved difficult to speak to. Many just kept saying ‘look online’ when asked about current openings. We were a bit disappointed as we had hoped to give out some CVs and hear about specific job opportunities. The Armed Forces team were the most informative about current application procedures, including the fact that girls can now apply to the Royal Marines!

Back at the University, we kept working away on our projects. Each Go_Girl needs a different range of technical skills to complete their own concept. We have been working hard on building up our HTML, Scratch and Unity abilities. Stay tuned for more updates on these exciting ventures!

Leading on from last week’s inspiring career advice afternoon with Kiki McDonough, the Go_Girls have decided to attend an upcoming job fair. Hosted in the Oxford MINI Plant by OxLEP, the Careers Fest on the 6th of February is a fantastic opportunity to meet 50 local employers and gather information and ideas about work. To start the session we took a look at some questions that an employer might ask an attendee at the fair, and vice a versa.

It was great to have an open discussion about our own experiences of applying for jobs – both the good, the bad and the ugly! Sharing the tips we’ve picked up along the way with one another really helps to build our collective knowledge and confidence for future applications.

Next we moved onto working on the Go_Girls’ individual projects.

Putting together prototypes of the final products, whether that’s a wireframe of a website or an app mock-up, has been a great way of visualising the steps required to achieve these goals. Having these initial plans on hand when working on different bits of code helps to keep the big picture in mind.

We ended the session with a well deserved slice of chocolate cake to celebrate one of the team’s 18th birthday. After all, all work and no cake would make for a dull Go_Girl experience!

As the famous saying goes, if you follow your passion you will never have to work a day in your life. But how do you find what really motivates you? And once you’ve found your raison d’être, how can you pursue it successfully? On Tuesday we were very lucky to have a visit from Kiki McDonough, an amazing and inspiring career woman who kindly wanted to share her top tips on this subject with the Go_Girl team.

Kiki’s true calling came to her aged 30, when she was asked by a friend to design some jewellery. She told us that taking that opportunity wasn’t easy – she had never done anything like this before. What if it didn’t work out? What if she let her friend down? But she bravely accepted the challenge. Some of those early designs are now on display in the Victoria and Albert museum. She has never looked back!

Kiki was very keen to hear about the Go_Girls’ interests and hopes for the future. One of the young women shared her passion for knitting and showed Kiki some of her latest creations. Kiki gave some great career advice (as a mentor for the Prince’s Trust she is very experienced in this area). Using the power of social media as a marketing tool, and standing up to shake an interviewer’s hand when you first meet them were key take aways. Being disciplined with time and money has also been essential in ensuring Kiki’s success. Importantly Kiki also wanted the Go_Girl team to know that finding what really inspires you can take time. Trying out a number of different jobs is a great way to narrow down what matters to you, but you must make sure that you don’t get stuck. For Kiki finding jewellery design came after over ten years working in various secretarial positions. They paid the bills, but didn’t feed her soul! It’s never too late to try something new – you just need to have the confidence to do so!

Kiki’s wise words supported us in writing our aspiration timelines for next year. We can’t wait to see what the young women will achieve!

The first Go_Girl session since the Christmas break went off with a bang! The festive period, a difficult time for many across the country, was especially tricky for many of the Go_Girls. It was so wonderful to all get together and reconnect. We were keen to focus on the new year. It’s a fresh start, an opportunity to start over and to achieve new aims.

After checking in with everyone we re-visited the Go_Girls’ project plans from last term. Over the break many of the young women have had new and fresh ideas about what they would like to focus on in their individual work. To try and map these out, the Go_Girls filled in some project plans. It is important to have a clear idea of where we are heading, and what support we may need.

The young women have some really exciting plans in place! We can’t wait to see how they will develop over the coming months. To end the session, the Go_Girls were asked to think even further ahead, to what they might like to be doing after completing the programme. Jo Hannaford, our amazing supporter from Goldman Sachs, had specifically asked the young women to consider these future goals. Many of the young women have previously been told that they will amount to nothing. It’s pretty difficult (understandably) to believe in yourself if you’ve been spoken to in this way. But that’s why the Go_Girl project is so important – we build each other up, and support one another to achieve our aims. Each member of the team has their own interests and passions, whether that be helping abandoned animals or encouraging more girls to take up mechanics. We know the future is bright for these fantastic and inspiring young women – and we can’t wait to see each other make it!

Our last session before the Christmas/New Year holiday was a fantastic one! Bill Liao visited the Go_Girls to share his story of going from a high school dropout to an extremely successful entrepreneur, philanthropist, author and speaker. He also shared his passion for employing entrepreneurship to create value for society and enrich the lives of others. He has founded numerous initiatives including CoderDojo, a worldwide network of free programming clubs for children, and WeForest, an initiative to combat climate change by restoring forests which cool the planet and decrease carbon dioxide. Learn more about him and his fascinating work at Bill Liao: “Two Trillion Trees to Save the World” and Bill Liao – Meaningful Investment and What Issues Should we Care About – DFF 2017.

The Go_Girls are preparing projects and presentations and many of them experience anxiety about public speaking. Bill addressed this issue and spoke about how anxiety and excitement are very similar emotions and a person can “choose how you be about stuff.” In other words, we have the power to reframe our thinking about public speaking by focusing on the positive outcomes rather than any perceived negative outcomes of a talk. We can shift from being anxious to being excited. For more information about the science behind this, see Alison Wood Brooks’ article titled “Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement” in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

During this week’s session, the Go_Girls also utilized a template to define their project plans and determine a timeline for each phase. They have some brilliant ideas and there was lots of excitement as they discussed their plans with the group. To end the year, the young women enjoyed a lovely dinner at Ask Italian followed by Jack and the Beanstalk, a wonderfully fun family pantomime. For a little extra Christmas cheer, each of the young women went home with a box of delicious Cadbury chocolates! Happy Christmas to all and we will return in January with more exciting updates.

Jo Hannaford, Partner and Head of the EMEA Technology Division and global head of Quality Assurance Engineering at Goldman Sachs, along with her husband Jon, paid a visit to the Go_Girls and shared stories about her journey from being a student who regularly skipped school to becoming one of the most accomplished female programmers in Europe. She shared how the sudden death of her father, which left her mother without a source of income, prompted her to become serious about education and pursuing a career. She faced resistance and encountered those who doubted her ability to become a software engineer, a profession dominated by men. However, she did not allow the negative messages of others to stop her from reaching her goal.

Some of the Go_Girls shared their experiences of interviewing for jobs and not getting a call back and Jo responded by talking about the importance of being persistent and utilizing one’s network to find employment. She also encouraged the girls to have a variety of work experiences and to choose an occupation that they really love. Jo’s talk was a source of inspiration for the young women as well as the Go_Girl staff members!

After the visit, several of the girls reflected on the aspects of the talk that stood out most for them. Some of the enduring messages for the girls were:

“Don’t let anyone stop you from doing what you love.”  “Be persistent and knock on thousands of doors and one will open.”  “Jo’s story demonstrates that you can achieve no matter where you come from.”

Jo’s talk was very impactful!  She is a real life role model for the young women and we look forward to her next visit!

During the second half of the session, the young women celebrated Computer Science Education Week by participating in the Hour of Code. They completed a fun Scratch-based exercise related to the Wonder Woman movie and each of the young women received an Hour of Code certificate of completion.

It was a fantastic session!

After the great success of Cathy’s visit, we are very lucky to also be receiving a visit from Jo Hannaford, Head of EMEA Technology & Global Head of Quality Assurance Engineering at Goldman Sachs. She has been a big supporter of Go_Girl from the very beginning, and the Go_Girls who have already been fortunate enough to meet her really look up to her. We started today’s session with a short video featuring Jo, so that the group can start thinking about questions they might want to ask her next week. Very exciting times indeed!

The rest of the session was dedicated to Turtlestitch. We have a couple of new Go_Girls, and so it was important to run through the key aspects of the machine and how it works. It was a great refresher for the rest of the team, too. Seeing the code that the young woman are writing come alive in brightly coloured thread is so beautiful! It also really helps to make the process of learning to code more engaging.

The complexity of some of the patterns that the young woman have been creating is simply incredible. It will be very exciting to see how they build these new skills into their own projects in the coming months.

Coding our own embroidery on Turtlestitch has really inspired the Go_Girl team. Many of the young women are creative spirits, and it has been exciting to explore the ways that technology can enhance our artistic endeavours. But making it in the creative career world is not easy. We were very lucky this week to receive a visit from a woman that has  – Cathy Best. Cathy is a world renowned jewellery designer. Her designs have been worn by many famous figures, including Joanna Lumley, and have won numerous competitions.

But her journey to the top has not been an easy one. The Go_Girls really appreciated being able to hear about the hurdles Cathy has had to overcome to make it in the jewellery design world. In particular, Cathy never let other people’s negative comments get her down. Instead the put-downs she received early on drove her forward – she knew she could prove them wrong if she worked hard and didn’t give up.

We all face challenges in our quest to achieve our dreams. The Go_Girls face more than most. Yet they are determined to turn their lives around. Hearing from Cathy today, and seeing how far she has come since her early jewellery design sketches, was a brilliant experience that really motivated the young women to keep going. It was also very interesting to hear about the increasing importance of technology in the jewellery design business – CAD/CAM operators are now in high demand within the industry. It was a great session, and we can’t wait to see the Go_Girls’ own creative projects start to come alive.

Inspired by Julian Box talking about tech careers last week, this Go_Girl session tackled the issue of CVs. The average time a recruiter will spend looking at a CV is 5-7 seconds, and 76% of CVs are ignored if the email address given is ‘unprofessional’.  It was really interesting talking to the young women and hearing about their experiences of applying for jobs. Many of them have had disheartening encounters with bullying bosses and ableist colleagues. In the hope of giving the Go_Girls the best chance possible of winning their dream careers we spent part of the session writing and formatting their CVs.

We then moved on to exploring Turtlestitch, an amazing piece of technology that enables users to code patterns which are then printed by embroidery machines. This is right up the Go_Girls’ street – they are a very creative bunch! After a demonstration from one of last year’s participants the young women began creating their codes.

It will be really exciting to see the finished embroidery in the coming weeks!

This week the Go_Girls got to build on their presentation and Scratch skills. Giving short presentations each week on topics including technology-related jobs, and what it is like to be a young NEET in Oxfordshire, helps the young women to develop their confidence in public speaking. It is amazing to see how far they have come since the beginning of the programme. Many of the Go_Girls suffer from anxiety and depression. This can make speech-giving a very difficult task. However, having had the opportunity to practice in front of a supportive group of peers has enabled these young women to conquer their fears and strengthen their self-belief. It is fantastic to see!

The Go_Girls’ Scratch skills are also coming on leaps and bounds. All the tasks are ‘scaffolded’, so that the young women can move at their own pace. As they have moved through the exercises the difficulty level has increased. This ensures that everyone can tackle tasks at the level which is most rewarding for them. Of course, the Go_Girl facilitator team is always on hand to answer any questions and provide extra support.

Towards the end of the session Julian Box, the hugely successful technology entrepreneur, came in to meet the Go_Girls. They loved meeting him, and were particularly excited when he told them that traditional educational qualifications are not the most important tool for getting hired in the tech world. Instead, Julian told them that the coding projects a candidate has engaged in over the last year are of particular interest to technology companies. A portfolio of work that you have created yourself using code is far more representative of your ability to carry out tech projects than a GCSE in ICT. This is encouraging news for the young women, as many of them have been unable to attend formal schooling for some time due to health and family related issues. The future looks bright for our Go_Girls – all it takes is a computer and some code!

After a well-earned half term break the Go_Girls were back in the classroom and raring to get going. As with every session, we began with a group feedback exercise where the young women get to share what they’ve been up to over the past week.

The one thing that always stands out to me is how very unique each of these young women are. They may all have been labelled ‘NEET’ (not in education, employment or training) by the government, and therefore eligible for the Go_Girl programme. But every single member of this group has a very different story to tell as to how they ended up in this situation. They all have their own individual challenges to face, but also their own strengths to draw upon. Every single Go_Girl has interests that distinguish them from their peers. The Go_Girl programme aims to help nurture this individuality by enabling the young women to create their own projects. These endeavours combine coding and the Go_Girls’ other passions in creative and exciting ways. For example, one of the young women hopes to create a blog profiling stories of homeless people in Oxford, as well as information on how the public can help address this issue. This idea was inspired by her own experiences of homelessness. One of the other young women is hoping to create computer-generated textiles using a code-operated sewing machine. This week the young women got lots of time to work on their projects as well as support from the team with the code and computer skills that they might need. We are looking forward to seeing how these exciting ideas progress!

Do you enjoy giving presentations? When asked this question, many people will respond with an abrupt ‘No!’. A study conducted in 2012, for example, found that ‘public speaking’ is a more commonly listed fear than ‘death’! That’s my halloween outfit sorted then …

No matter how speaking to a group of strangers might make us feel, however, it cannot be avoided. Being able to present effectively is a vital life skill. Certainly, we won’t all be giving speeches in the House of Commons. But all of us at some point will have to speak in a meeting, attend an interview or even argue our case to a complaints department.

Today the Go_Girls faced their fears and gave giving a presentation a go. The session started with watching Nancy Duarte’s TedTalk on the ‘Structure of Great Talks’, and discussing why presentation skills might be important in the Go_Girls’ lives.

We then played a fantastic game called ‘Toastmaster’. A cup with words like Digital, HTML and ‘Go_Girl’ was passed around the room. Everyone had to pick out a word and then give a short impromptu speech on that topic. This exercise provided a really fun and light-hearted way to get a bit of presentation practice, and even the shyer members of the group felt able to join in.

The session finished with the young women creating their own presentations using either Office PowerPoint or Prezi. It was great to see the Go_Girls putting what they had learnt into practice. We have a number of opportunities to present coming up, and we can’t wait to see these brilliant young women give it their all!

This week the Go_Girls got straight back into Scratch with a fun and challenging task. The young women were asked to create a ‘guessing game’ using the skills they had learnt last week. The little ‘sprite’, or animated character, central to the Scratch interface can be programmed to randomly choose a number between 1 and 100. It can also be programmed to ask the gamer to guess ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ depending on what number they type in, until the correct number is guessed.

This activity provided a great opportunity to discuss some of the key programming concepts, such as loops. Scratch is proving to be a brilliant tool for bringing to life some of these abstract ideas in a tangible and enjoyable way.

Once the games had been completed we moved on to talking about presentation skills. We all downloaded Office and started to explore PowerPoint and Word. The Go_Girls will be asked to present their final projects at the end of the programme to an audience – not an easy feat, especially for the shier members of the group. Being able to present your ideas clearly and effectively, however, is a key skill for anyone entering further education or the workplace. We are really looking forward to seeing how the young women’s public speaking abilities develop in the coming weeks.

Are you an angry birds devotee? Or perhaps you’re more of a FIFA fan? If neither of those options appeal, then surely you’ve enjoyed a round of Pac-Man or Tetris in your time?

Online gaming is a global phenomenon – the UKIE estimates that there are between 2.2 and 2.6 billion gamers worldwide, and that the gaming market will be worth $128.5 billion by the end of 2020! How many of these gaming fans, however, have had a go at coding a game themselves? This week the Go_Girls got to do exactly that using an online platform called Scratch.

Scratch enables users to build ‘scripts’ by dragging and dropping various ‘command’ blocks to create interactive games and animations. One of last year’s Go_Girl team came in to present the game that she created last year. This really inspired the other Go_Girls, and soon they were getting started on all sorts of fun creations. We will be working on Scratch next week too, so stay tuned for more updates on this!

The Internet is everywhere – but do we know how to define it? This week the Go_Girls explored the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web, as well as coding their own webpage. Impressive going for a grey September afternoon!

To begin the session we watched a few excellent TedTalks to spark an informative discussion. We learnt that the Internet is the actual infrastructure which links the world’s computers together, enabling them to communicate. Meanwhile, the ‘Web’ lives on the Internet. It is one of the many ways of accessing information on the Internet by utilising browsers that link webpages together.

Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web, is based in Oxford Computer Science Department (no biggie). Some of the Go_Girls were keen to meet him and thank him for what he created. Fingers crossed for a Berners Lee/Go_Girl collaboration some time in the future!

Time to follow in Tim’s footsteps and do some coding of our own! Some of the Go_Girls felt a little daunted at the prospect, but by the end of the session everyone had coded their own webpage! It was really amazing to see the look on the young women’s faces when all their hard work paid off. The key was in the tags. Once you knew what these various commands meant and where to deploy them – hey presto! – you had a webpage.

We finished the session by planning out the Go_Girls’ individual projects, which they will be working on over the coming weeks. Some hope to create their own games, whilst others want to start websites exploring everything from mental health to the stereotypes affecting young women in mechanics. Supporting the young women to achieve their goals is an absolute privilege – we can’t wait to see how much they will achieve!

Following on from the great success of last week’s blogging session, this week saw the Go_Girls continue to work on their individual sites. Some of the young women have been working on their blogs in their own free time, adding new posts and information. They are all very different, reflecting the diversity of interests that the Go_Girls hold.

The young women were taught how to ‘inspect’ the code that lies behind their customised pages. Seeing how particular commands could be altered to make a blog title bold or underlined, for example, enabled the Go_Girls to begin learning code in a more tangible way.

With all this hard work going on, a bit of light relief was required. Luckily, an activity had been planned that involved the Go_Girls writing out ‘codes’ for a ‘robot’ (i.e. one of the research team) to carry out. The ‘codes’ were linked to different movements – an arrow pointing upwards means jump upwards, for example. The young women could also get creative and make their own codes, if they wished. There was a lot of laughter during this exercise – in particular when one of the robot researchers attempted the Irish jig – and it was also a brilliant way for the Go_Girls to get to grips with writing ‘code’.

The Go_Girls enjoyed a fun-filled summer with trips to Bourmouth Beach and Cadbury World. The summer fun has come to an end. However, our exciting fall sessions are now in full swing! We kicked off our first meeting with an introduction to WordPress, a web publishing tool. The focus this week was on creating a blog and learning about the similarities and differences between blogs and websites.  The young women were tasked with developing names for their blogs and thinking about topics. Several examples of blogs were reviewed including our very own Go_Girl blog, as well as blogs about poetry, celebrity animals, food, fashion, and more. There was lots of serious brainstorming going on in this session and the young women were very imaginative and created some catchy blog names! There was interest in a variety of blogpost topics including World War II, carpentry, video game reviews, tattoo art, and music videos.

In addition to creating blogs using WordPress, the young women learned about domain extensions and what they represent and the talented designer of our Go_Girl mascot gave us a lesson on colour theory as it relates to art and web design. That was a real treat! Work on the blogs will continue and we will have a look at the code behind the sites in upcoming sessions. Be sure to watch this space for more updates!

It is hard to believe that we are at the end of the Go_Girl summer term! The last eight weeks have far exceeded everyone’s expectations in terms of the young women’s progress. They are very much on the way to ascertaining their goals and achieving them, and should feel really proud of all of the hurdles that they have overcome in recent months. For the summer finale we began by watching a selection of fascinating TedTalks, which explored some of the topics we’ve been covering so far. In particular, Jennifer Doudna’s TedTalk on human DNA alteration was a brilliant watch. It showed us all how coding is not just relegated to computers, but that also our own bodies are made up of complex patterns. Cracking the code of the genome has hugely beneficial potential in terms of treating genetic disease, but Jennifer was also keen to open up some of the ethical dilemmas that ‘editing’ our genetic make-up could hold. The Go_Girls all said that they found the discussion interesting – a great intro to the sequence-based programming we’ll be doing next term. With their new laptops in hand, they will be able to look up all kinds of information over the summer break too – perhaps even a few more Ted videos!

To end the session the young women created vision boards to help them on their way to achieving their aspirations. Visualising success has been proven to play a major role in the actual attainment of success. Sports psychologists, for example, have proven that athletes who imagine winning races then actually go on to get the fastest times. With this in mind, the Go_Girls set about mapping their dreams for the future.

Some of the young women hope for a family, others to travel the world. Many of the Go_Girls explored their ideal careers, and the steps they hope to take to make them a reality. It was such a fun and creative way to welcome the summer holidays. With their new laptops in hand, the young women are excited to begin exploring job and further study possibilities. We can’t wait to catch up with them again in August on our group trip to the seaside.

For the penultimate session before the summer break the Go_Girls had a visit from Helena and Menisha, researchers from the Computer Science department at Oxford. As well as giving us some fascinating internet facts (Most popular celeb on Instagram? Selena Gomez with 123 million followers!!), they also led a really important discussion on cyberbullying. Apparently, 40% of young people in the UK have experienced cyberbullying, including many of the Go_Girls. However, Helena told us that only 10% of those facing this issue have reported it to a guardian, teacher or the police. The Go_Girls suggested that ‘fear’, ‘not being taken seriously’ and ‘nothing being done about it’ have stopped them from telling someone about being cyberbullied. Helena and Menisha agreed with these concerns and told the group about their Digital Wildfire project, which has sought to make the internet a safer place for all young people. They also invited the young women to take part in an exciting new piece of research on young people’s internet habits – watch this space for more information as this project progresses!

After some incredibly delicious Indian food (cooked by the amazing Ashmita) we got stuck into some employment-focused activities. It isn’t easy trying to pin down what you want to do with your life, never mind the steps you need to take to reach that goal. Mel brought in some brilliant ‘workstar’ forms, which ask the young women to rate themselves out of ten on different job-related skill-sets, such as ‘social skills’ and ‘basic skills’. Next the Go_Girls were able to fill in a table detailing the areas they would most like to work on, and the next steps that Mel has suggested to help them realise their aspirations.

Paige also led a super useful and insightful discussion on interview tips and techniques. Smiling, eye contact, and ensuring you have a good knowledge of the company you are applying to, are key. The Go_Girls shared their worries about being put on the spot, or not knowing what to say in the moment. Paige reminded us all that it’s OK to take a minute to think, or ask the interviewer to repeat the question. This shows you are thoughtful, and have good problem solving abilities. The young women finished off the session today with a round of knitting – an excellent introduction to logical and pattern-based thinking. The future is already looking brighter for our amazing Go_Girls – we are all excited to see how they progress with their dreams over the coming months.

This week the Go_Girls tackled one of the most talked about pressures of our time – body image. Anyone with Instagram knows that tanned, toned (and more often than not edited) selfies are de rigueur on this social app. It’s hardly surprising that trying to keep up with these unrealistic #bodygoals can lead young people to struggle with their mental health. As a group we shared some of the worries and concerns that we have about social media pressures and body ideals, as well as some tips for improving self-confidence. Surrounding yourself with positive people, who boost you rather than knocking you down, is key. After all, the ‘thigh gap’ and ‘thick thigh’ trends will come and go, but true friendship lasts a lifetime.

An important part of being self-confident and forging positive relationships is knowing what your values and aspirations are. For the second part of the session the young women defined the values and aspirations that they hold. For some this included family, friends, happiness and health, whilst for others independence, helping the community and being determined came first. This exercise was a really positive step for the young women towards finding, and reaching, their future goals. Goals that have nothing to do with an ideal dress size, but instead family, friend and career ambitions. The Go_Girls shared some of these in a second round of selfie videos.

The sessions this week were so full of optimism and hope for the future that they ended with us all dancing for joy …. literally! Everyone got on their feet to pull some moves to the cheesy disco classic ‘the Cha Cha slide’. A very happy way to end the week – roll on session 7!

We had an excellent week this week, where we continued our dicussions with the young women about being safe online.  We kicked off both our sessions with a conversation about finance, debt and benefits that the young women had with a representative from the Department of Work and Pensions. It gave the young women a chance to talk about the jobs they’ve had, what they’ve learned, and what options they needed to consider in their current job-hunts. We talked full-time jobs, apprenticeships and everything in between!

When talking about digital safety, we enjoyed an excellent discussion with the young women about how they approached posting information online  – what were the safeguards that they put in place for themselves when using social media? This led to interesting discussions around self-image and how we represent ourselves online.

We put this into practice by going outside and starting with video introductions (‘video selfies’). Some of the young women did not yet feel comfortable to be in front of the camera, but found creative ways to introduce themselves nonetheless. We were all very impressed! We encouraged the young women to reflect in their short videos on what they wanted to achieve through go_girl, why they were in fact here at go_girl, and then, coinciding with International Selfie Day, spent some time in the sun making these fun ‘selfie videos’ to capture those thoughts, and showcase some creativity!

Next week we will revisit some of the issues around self-image and body image and how different people represent themselves online, and will move towards writing our own blog posts.

This week we focused on relationships. After our routine check-in we jumped right in by discussing what makes up both healthy and unhealthy relationships.

For healthy relationships we found that trust, support, compassion and being able to banter without taking it too far are most important. As far as indicators of unhealthy relationships go the major red flags were abuse and being taken advantage of. It was a passionate discussion and definitely brought the group closer.

After discussing what makes relationships healthy and unhealthy we went through hypothetical situations and how we would handle those. One of the questions that generated a lot of dialogue and amazing responses was “what would you do if your friends gave you a hard time for taking school and homework seriously?” Ebonee responded with “talk to me when you’re cycling and taking the bus and I’m riding around in my whip!” Another said, “Don’t mess with my future!” The overall activity was productive and a nice way to share our experiences with each other.

The two activities generated a lot of discussion so time went by faster than expected. In our first group of the week, we then moved on to relationships and friendships online and to a discussion about being safe online, particularly on social media. This will also be important for later on, when we start writing our own blogs. We will revisit the topic then. In the second group, we didn’t get a chance to talk about being safe online and go over the pseudocoding this week but we will in our next session. We decided to use the last bit of time in the session to hand out the phones and laptops. Everyone was so excited to receive their new laptops. Ebonee said it felt like Christmas and they said they couldn’t wait to get to work on their go girl projects. We can’t wait either!

Next week the go girls are headed to Rose Hill to represent the program! We’re looking forward to updating you all on that next week.

This week’s session was action packed, and intense, and all the go_girls and staff worked hard to challenge some of the notions of what coding is and how to think about it, and to push the boundaries of their comfort.

The session started off on a somber note, with a discussion about the events that had unfolded in Manchester . The staff were keen to hear the young womens’ thoughts and help them work through any anxieties they may have, and develop more positive thinking with them. After a very deep, reflective and interesting conversation, the focus turned to the activities of the day, starting with learning how to give a speech! Using an activity from ToastMaster’s , Anne provided the go_girls with prompts on forming a speech on a randomly chosen topic. The young women, despite an initial hesitation, all rose to the challenge, overcoming anxieties that would have held them back in other spaces! It was so exciting to see the go_girls step up to the challenge and perform so well.

After a much needed break, Niall introduced the go_girls to the idea of psedocoding again, following up from last week’s exercise with stacked cups.Using the analogy of making a cup of tea, he walked all the go_girls through writing a “program” to make a cup of tea. The girls intitially were bemused as to why they were thinking about making a up of tea, and what coding had to do with it, but part of today’s exercises was to reinforce the ideas introduced last week – that coding was more than just “sitting at a computer” , and that there were ways to think about coding in the most routine of activities. Creating the code for making a cup of team involved thinking about making the cup of tea as a sequence of actions, which would form the code- an introduction to the idea of sequential thinking. After Niall and Paula walked the go_girls through some of the concepts of syntax, and thinking about a sequence of actions as code, Niall challenged the go_girls to write their own programs to make a cup of tea:

Slide credits: Damian Gordon – https://www.slideshare.net/DamianGordon1/pseudocode-10373156

As you can see from the pictures, the young women embraced the challenge magnificently, and then proceeded to write “programs” for other routine activities – Ebonnee, for example, wrote a piece of code to describe how to brush one’s teeth. Charlotte chipped in with her program on how to arrive at go_girl sessions.

This exercise was followed up by a brief session on knitting that was led by Ashmita and Anne, to once again reinforce the idea that codes and patterns can be seen everywhere, and that knitting was an example of coding. Following a pattern for a particular knitted item was like executing a program, as the pattern was essentially code for the knitter. The young women were intrigued by the idea, and really excited to get stuck into learning how to cast on and then knit! As you can see from the session on Wednesday , the young women made excellent progress:

The go_girls from both sessions came together to go out for dinner together. Dinner was at Al-Shami, a Lebanese restaurant in Jericho, Oxford. It was a great opportunity for all the young women to come together and try something new in a more informal setting, and a great time for both staff and the go-girls to get to know one another a bit more outside of the weekly sessions, and just be a little silly!

The second session of go_girl had a lot to live up to after the huge success of week 1. Unsurprisingly, however, week 2 proved to be another fantastic afternoon full of insightful discussions and fun activities. I was lucky enough to join the second group for session 2 this week, with JJ, Sophie, Rebecca and Abbey, which also meant being able to witness the debut of JJ’s brilliant go_girl mascot! JJ has taken everyone’s input on board to create an uber impressive Xena warrior princess-esque emblem that really captures the strength and determination of the young women in the group.

The grit that the team possesses became very clear during the group discussion about anxieties and worries. Through bravely sharing any concerns that they have, such as worrying about presenting in a group or feeling down on a go_girl day, the young women were able to support each other and come up with joint solutions to tackle these issues. This brought the team much closer together – as did the go_girls’ shared loved of animals! One of the young women was very keen to bring her new puppy into one of the sessions, so watch this space for cute dog photos in the coming weeks!

Next we had the opportunity to share experiences of work, both positive and negative. It was really interesting to hear about each young woman’s very different employment pathways. Most of the group had experienced some sort of bullying or belittling in the workplace, which had made them feel low in confidence. They all agreed that being in a supportive work environment would make a huge difference to their confidence. One of the young women has an induction for a new job this week, and is really hopeful that it will work out as the team there have been really welcoming. We will all be keeping our fingers crossed for Sophie over the next few days and wishing her all the best!

Whilst a positive and empowering workplace is a must for all of the young women, each individual has very different career ambitions that match their own unique interests. Completing roadmaps detailing where the go_girls would like to be in two years time, and the steps needed to reach that goal, allowed the group to reflect on these differing needs. One of the young women, for example, would like to be in full time employment in two years time, and would like to have further training, help in writing her CV and a boost in confidence to get there. These plans will really help the go_girl team to provide tailored and effective support for each of the young women – I can’t wait to work alongside them over the coming months to help make their dreams a reality.

We’re so thrilled to be back with a new group of ambitious young women and had our first session of the year. We spent the session getting to know each other through different ice breaker activities, discussing everyone’s expectations and goals for the year and collaborating on what the go_girl mascot will look like. We have twelve girls to start with and plans to add more. Because of the increased size we’ve decided to split this year’s sessions into two per week instead of one so everyone gets the proper attention needed for their projects and skill development.

When discussing each of the go_girl’s expectations and goals for being part of the team most said they were eager to learn how to make games, create empowerment blogs relating to things they’re passionate about, building confidence and overall skills. Everyone said they were looking forward to using what they learn with go_girl for their futures. Each go_girl brings a unique perspective and different skills that makes me look forward to the collaboration opportunities ahead.
Speaking of unique talents, one of our go_girls, JJ, is a self-identified creative with years of experience and an impressive artistic eye! When we were working on the mascot design everyone went around
expressing what they would like included and JJ used all of the input to draft an amazing mascot! We’re excited to share it with you all when it’s finalised.

The session went by quickly as usual but it was really productive. Each go_girl was given a notebook to use for reflection so they spent part of the last bit of the session writing in those. We ended with some lively discussions on various topics the go_girls are interested in discussing and learning more about. A couple of them included cyber-bullying, privacy online, body positive messages and confidence building. These are especially pertinent topics today that are important to learn about and discuss. It will be really interesting to hear everyone’s experiences, concerns and proposed solutions!
Next week we will begin individual roadmaps for each go_girl that will help outline their goals and paths to reach them. We will also dive into pseudo-coding!