A free online summer web development program for middle school students, hosted by the nonprofit ProgramHers, will be held 4-5:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, June 9-July 3. Applications are open for students and volunteers.
Founded by Anjali Thakrar and Alessa Somer in 2017, ProgramHers has been holding free engineering coding classes at local elementary schools, with the goal of empowering and inspiring underrepresented minorities in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) to get involved in the tech space.
During this difficult time, ProgramHers is working to continue providing opportunities for students to explore computer science by hosting the four-week summer coding program for middle school students (grades 7-9) centered on web development.
Every week, ProgramHers will run a web development class, a design workshop, a social action activity, and a talk from a guest speaker. The guest speakers are women from various subfields in computer science, coming from the companies Google and Disney, and labs at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and MIT.
ProgramHers hopes to inspire students to pursue computer science, and educate them about the importance and necessity of equality and representation in STEM fields.
To ensure all students who are interested can join, ProgramHers has been working with the Santa Barbara Unified School District to provide all Santa Barbara- and Goleta-based students in the program access to Chromebooks for the duration of the program.
Prospective students and volunteers can apply through the following links; students: https://forms.gle/MLKRRWW6N29rot9F9; volunteers: https://forms.gle/1SPnubbSDPeRiW5x8.
For more information, visit programhers.com or contact programherssb@gmail.com.