How do you change the world by Sarala Pandey and Ashtha Singh
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•214 views
How do you change the world by Sarala Pandey and Ashtha Singh
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to How do you change the world by Sarala Pandey and Ashtha Singh
Similar to How do you change the world by Sarala Pandey and Ashtha Singh (20)
More from QA or the Highway
More from QA or the Highway (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
How do you change the world by Sarala Pandey and Ashtha Singh
- 1. How do you change the world? By developing future women leaders
- 2. Sarala Pandey • Immigrated from Nepal to US in 1990 • Internship at Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) • QA Analyst, QA Lead, Off-shore Liaison at Sterling Commerce, Sypherlink, DSW • Quality Assurance Manager for Huntington National Bank
- 3. Ashtha Singh • Junior at Dublin Jerome H.S. • Martial Artist • Field Hockey • Passionate about community service
- 8. Problem? Lack of education 1. Education is undervalued 2. Limited education and job opportunities 3. Vulnerable and dependent state
- 9. Solution! Tech Camp 1. Work with the community 2. Set focused and decisive goals 3. Be patient and flexible
- 17. Day Session 1 Session 2 Monday • Welcome • Ice-breaker • Google Drive, docs, slides • How to create/write email • Social Media • Pros & Cons • Security • Sexual Predators • Cyber Bullying Tuesday • Motivational Speaker • Introduction to IT • Animation • Intro to Coding Wednesday • User Experience & Design • Accessibility testing • Intro to Audit Thursday • Photo Editing & Graphic Design • Intro to SDLC • Recap/Activity Friday • CSCC Admin presentation • CSCC Tour • Resume building Curriculum
- 20. Changes? Tech Camp 1. Get started earlier 2. Change the order 3. Work with the students
- 21. Summary Tech Camp 1. Work with the community 2. Set focused and decisive goals 3. Be patient and flexible
- 23. How do you change the world? By developing future women leaders Sarala Pandey <<<Contact info goes here>>> Ashtha Singh <<<Contact info goes here>>> Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- TITLE How do you change the world? By developing future women leaders ABSTRACT Change begins at home. Many first generation disadvantaged immigrants to this country do not attend college, which means their children do not have adequate guidance on pursing higher-level education. The community can come together to provide help to these children with code camps. This past summer, a Young Women in Tech code camp was held in Columbus for members of the Bhutanese-Nepali Refugee Community. More than a dozen experts in technology volunteered to teach girls aged 13-17 about computer programming, accessibility, user-centered design processes, cyber security, Photoshop, software development and desktop management. The volunteers taught the girls about the extensive career options within technology, with each volunteer focusing on their respective area of expertise. The training was supplemented by college admissions officers providing education guidance and a course on resume building. The entire camp was sponsored by a local community college with financial support for meals, equipment, and clothing provided by local businesses. In this session, the audience will learn how to uplift the next generation of leaders through supplemental training opportunities outside of school. The audience will be shown how to organize a code camp locally, from securing facilities for training, to financial support, to soliciting volunteer teachers in technology. INTRO Thank you all for coming! So…How do you change the world? There are many, many ways. But today, we're going to share our story of how we helped change the world: by establishing a "Young Women in Tech" camp to help develop future women leaders! But first, let us introduce ourselves…
- Rhetorical questions First tech experience Decision to pursue tech STEM – broader and younger Young, refugee women cutoff --- I want you to think back to the first experience you had with technology. Was it a slow, clunky computer in your parents’ study? Or maybe your very first cell phone? Now think little bit further ahead. When did you decide you wanted to pursue a field in technology. Raise your hand if that was in high school. Raise your hand if that was in college. Raise your hand if you got a job and it just happened somewhere along the way. The interest in STEM is getting broader and broader, and those interested are getting started younger and younger. As of 2017, 125.97 million people were employed in IT fields, and that number is only growing. However, there is a large subsection of our youth being cut off from this field, young refugee women.
- So what? Who cares? Reasons to care Deprives young refugee women of opportunity IT segment of job market Tech requirements of non-IT jobs Deprives IT Diversity necessary to creativity and problem-solving in IT --- So why does this matter? The young refugee women community sounds like a pretty small subsection of the population, if they aren’t taking part in STEM fields, who cares? Well, I do, and you should too. As I stated before, IT jobs make up a vast sector of the current job market, and even jobs outside that usually require a bare minimum of technological proficiency. Without this education, these young women are denied the opportunity to really progress very far in any field. Additionally, the IT field requires way more problem solving and creativity than anyone really gives it credit for. More so than anything else, diversity of thought is integral for creative problem solving -- different race, religion, sex, and life journey all lend themselves to the experiences that give people the various outlooks that allow them to attack the same problem in numerous different ways. By ignoring young refugee women, we are depriving the IT community of the diverse thought that would result in a goldmine of creativity.
- Nepalese migrated to Bhutan King of Bhutan forced them out and into Nepali refugee camps UN intervention Refugees moved across the world --- To give some background, the refugees that we worked with are originally from Bhutan. Their ancestors had migrated there from Nepal, and three generations later the king of Bhutan brutally forced them out. They were sent to live in barely livable Nepali refugee camps which were completely isolated from other societies. This is when the United Nations stepped in. Some refugees went to Europe, some went to Australia, and several moved to America.
- Still, most had very little formal education and no preparation for the culture shock that they were entering. This is the case for countless refugees coming to America.
- There is a severe lack of education among the refugees that came to America. When I say lack of education, I’m not just referring to academic education, though that deficiency exists too. I’m referring more towards cultural knowledge, of the various functions of the American educational system, or the American workplace. And this is translating to their kids; the first generation immigrants that are being raised here. Therein lies the problem, these kids are stuck in between two very different cultures. Their parents have minimal education and very traditional values which directly contrasts their surroundings. Kids look to their parents for leadership in all aspects of life, but these kids aren’t afforded that. Especially the young women. Because of the beliefs of their parents, many of them are just encouraged to find a good husband and get married as early as possible; education is extremely undervalued. Unfortunately, this isn’t a practice that breeds success in America. With a staggering rise in both double income households and later marriages, leaving young women wit limited education and job opportunities puts them in an extremely vulnerable and dependent state. Despite its flaws, this mentality persists in refugee communities and has resulted in a staggering high school dropout rate. Without any income and extremely limited resources, it is near impossible to become successful enough to support yourself in America, and unfortunately, the current circumstance is leading many young women to continue the cycle of poverty.
- So, if "Lack of Education" was the problem, what is the solution? There are many things one could try to solve this problem. However, our solution was a Young Women in Tech camp! Today, we'll be telling the story of how we established and ran this tech camp to help solve the problem of "lack of education" and develop future women leaders. And, throughout our story, we will emphasize 3 main points: Work with the community Set focused and decisive goals Be patient and flexible One additional note: As we tell our story, behind us will be images of girls going to or attending school around the world. Getting an education is something that many people take for granted. Even in this country. However, many girls around the world will go to great lengths to learn, improve, grow, and get an education. And this spirit is part of the theme of our story.
- Continue The Story…until the "local news" part, then click.
- Continue The Story…until the "local news" part, then click.
- Continue The Story…until the "local news" part, then click.
- Continue The Story…until the "local news" part, then click.
- Continue The Story…until the "local news" part, then click.
- Continue The Story…until the "local news" part, then click.
- Walk-through the curriculum, very briefly describing each part of each session.
- Video - 2:18 https://www.10tv.com/article/summer-camp-teaches-coding-central-ohio-teens
- What Would We Change Were we proud of everything we had accomplished? Yes. If we could go back, would we change anything? Absolutely. First and foremost, we should have started earlier. There is a ton of little things that go into a project like this, as you guys have heard about for the last 30 minutes. We got away with a lot of things just because of our already long standing relationships with people. But even then, that wasn’t always reliable or effective. What should have been a marathon we did as a sprint, not the best choice. Most of these tasks are really just communication based. Calling and talking to people, emailing people, all of these things can be done really well if you just put aside about 30 minutes a day and a couple hours over the weekend for about 3 months, you can probably accomplish the exact same thing we did with far less stress. Secondly, the order of events in which we did things was definitely not as efficient as it could have been. I would still recommend that the first thing you do be consult and share your ideas with the community that you’re working with. This is something that starts at the very beginning of the process and should continue throughout. After that, start looking for a space. To do anything else, you need to lock down a date and an address, which you can’t affirmatively do without a confirmed location. As soon as you’ve got that, you want to start getting the word out to volunteers. Like I said before, people value their time more than anything. The further in advance you can communicate to people what the premise of your project and the capacity in which they would be involved, the better. A lot of times, this will go hand in hand with curriculum. Depending on the scope of your project, the volunteers may or may not be able to help you put together the curriculum. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to go in with a fluid premise of what you would like the curriculum to be, and let it be subject to change if anyone has good input. Lastly, food and donations. Usually, these things are the most optional. Thye allow you to take a program from good to great, but at the end of the day, good still works. Whereas the program couldn’t run without volunteers or curriculum, most kids can stand to pack a lunch. I would like to clarify that its likely that a lot of these things are going to be happening simultaneously. Still, it’s pretty intuitive; you want to start with the most important and time sensitive things. Although we did work with the community, because it is important, in retrospect, we should have also worked more directly with the student/girls themselves. <<<explain why>>>
- Working with people within the community We’ve said this multiple times today, but I absolutely cannot stress enough how important it is when doing any form of community service to work with the community rather than for them. What I mean when I say that is, as well-intentioned as we may be, there is no way for us to REALLY know what a community needs. Furthermore, when we go in as if we have all the right answers and know what's best, its impossible not to come off with a certain degree of condescension that will only be met with hostility and cynicism. Even us, speaking the same language and from the same culture, were still met with ample skepticism in the initial phases of our work. How we worked around this was beginning by talking to Lal Thappa, a founding member of the Bhutanese American Student Organization, or BASO. This is a group started for young adults in the Bhutanese refugee community that are attending or had recently graduated from college. Lal voiced the concerns of BASO member regarding the high school members in their community. He explained the lack of direction most of them had regarding education and how few had viable goals for after high school. By talking to them, we were directed towards a specific focus that we knew would prove beneficial to the people that we wanted to help. Then, throughout the whole process, they constantly helped us with communication. See, communication was one of the biggest issues that we had, which had a lot to do with that general skepticism that a lot of people held. Why are these people trying to help me? What are they trying to get out of it? This was something that BASO became absolutely crucial in, as they were able to get the information out in a way that we would never have been able to. Start with a focused and decisive set of goals When we started the camp, we had 2 things -- a premise and a list of goals. This acted as a compass guiding us in which direction to take. With a project like this, it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and frazzled with all of the options or routes that you can go in. When you set a clear and concise goal early on, you can make your decision by referring back to those goals and deciding which option clearly accomplishes them best. It’s important not to be too lofty or unrealistic. For example, if we had said that at the end of this camp, we want all of the girls that participate to go to college with a STEM major, it would have been ridiculous. Instead, we focussed on two different types of goals, explicit goals related to what the girls would learn, and more abstract goals related to lessons that they would take away. For example, we wanted them all to be proficient in Excel spreadsheets by the end of the camp. But, we also wanted to encourage them to pursue higher education and build their confidence in their abilities academically. One of these goals is far more measurable than the other, but setting them early on will allow you to more easily navigate what path you want to take, and not get too distracted with all of the options present. Be Patient and Flexible When we started this project, a lot of our preconceived procedures had to be thrown out. Something we didn’t realize we would have to do so much was actually advertising the camp. None of these kids had ever been to summer camp and none of their parents even knew what it was. And, as I said before, they were very very suspicious of the whole concept. They couldn’t really fathom why anyone would want to help them with nothing to really gain. Unfortunately, this resulted in a lot of struggles convincing girls to participate in the first place. This can be really discouraging because it feels like you’re putting in all of this work to help people, but it also seems like they don’t want to be helped. At this point its really important to take a step back and remember why you’re doing what you’re doing, and put yourself in the shoes of the disadvantaged community. For us, the strict scheduling and pre-planning aspect wasn’t really working, so we had to get rid of it, We sent out information to them, but we were almost wholly dependent on the leading members of BASO to make sure that there would be follow through on the other end. We realized that we had to be willing to switch our methods based on how willing the community was to go along with it, and with so little time we just decided to go by a very simple standard, if it isn’t working, change it.
- So, what’s the big message here? Are we telling you to go and locate a group of Bhutanese refugees in your city and create a tech camp for them? No. At the end of the day, this is all about listening to what people need, and acting. Every community has a group of people that’s struggling in their own way. Maybe adult illiteracy is a really big problem where you’re from, and literacy programs would best benefit your neighborhood. Or maybe teenage drug use is what’s causing detriment, and the greatest form of help would be after school homework help programs. Good news, everything we shared with you today is still applicable.