On Thursday 15th March, Accenture hosted a Girls In STEM event in London to encourage more young girls to pursue a career in science, technology, engineering and maths. These girls participated in many activities and workshops such as coding, visiting different stalls to learn about different careers and companies and having a Q&A session with different inspirational women such as Bethany Koby, CEO and co-founder of the popular children’s toy company Tech Will Save Us.

During the coding session, the girls attempted to create a front cover for the National Geographic magazine using codes which produced shapes and colours. After learning how the codes worked, they made amazing pictures which included animals such as fish, and even a penguin! This workshop taught the girls that computers aren’t just for men, even women are able to use technology.

Later, the girls went around the building, looking at different stalls and hearing about different careers and subjects such as special effects, robots and the NHS. This gave the girls an insight into what these careers are like. They also participated in another workshop where they thought of different ideas to reduce food waste, which taught them that creativity is also necessary in STEM. Some of the girls also met Jade Bowler, an inspirational 18 year old vlogger who talks about various different topics on her Youtube channel, UnJaded Jade.

Lastly, they participated in a Q&A session with different inspirational women such as Bethany Koby, CEO and co-founder of the popular children’s toy company Tech Will Save Us. The women spoke about the hardships they faced while trying to pursue their different career paths like engineering and being a police officer, and also encouraged the girls not to give up on their dreams and achieve whatever they wanted. Anicka Ahmed, a 15 year old girl from Lister Community School, says, “The Girls In STEM programme was really inspirational as it opened our eyes and broke down the boundaries girls thought they had.”