Milestone Moment: Girls4Tech™ Reaches 1 Million Girls in 30 Countries
Mastercard's Girls4Tech™ program has achieved its goal of educating one million girls and aims to expand this to five million by 2025. Launched in 2014, the initiative emphasizes STEM education, including careers in fraud detection and cybersecurity. The program has partnered with organizations like Discovery Education to reach 1.6 million girls by 2023 and has introduced new topics like artificial intelligence. It addresses the confidence gap among females in STEM through mentorship and curriculum enhancements.
- Reached the initial goal of educating one million girls.
- Aims to educate five million girls by 2025.
- Expanded partnerships with organizations like Discovery Education.
- Introduced new STEM topics including AI and cybersecurity.
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PURCHASE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mastercard's signature science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) program, Girls4Tech™, today reached its initial goal of educating one million girls. The program has a new and inspiring ambition to reach five million girls by 2025.
The program, which launched in 2014, offers activities and curriculum built on global science and math standards. It incorporates Mastercard’s deep expertise in technology and innovation, enabling students to discover a range of STEM careers, such as fraud detective, data scientist and software engineer.
Starting as a hands-on, in-person session run by employee volunteers, the program has expanded into new topics such as artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and enhanced access to its STEM curriculum through a digital learning experience, Girls4Tech Connect, which has been translated into eight languages.
Susan Warner, vice president of talent and community engagement and founder of Girls4Tech™, said, “Our goal is to build foundational STEM knowledge and develop critical 21st century skills girls need for their studies and career success. Our program sparks their curiosity in STEM and teaches them real-world applications of those skills.”
How Girls4Tech reaches future STEMinists:
- Announced a new partnership to create a Girls4Tech digital curriculum with Discovery Education — the global leader in standards-aligned digital curriculum resources, engaging content, and professional learning for K-12 classrooms — to reach 1.6 million girls by 2023.
- Partnering with other global and national organizations such as Scholastic, AIF, Major League Baseball, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), The R&A, YCAB in Indonesia and Arus in Malaysia to further scale the program and offer STEM skills in unique ways to girls ages 8-16.
- Adding new curriculum to give students deeper exposure to the growing fields of cybersecurity and AI.
- Launching new programs like Girls4Tech 2.0 for girls ages 13-16, and Girls4Tech & Code, a 20-week coding program for girls 8-10.
Moving the needle for Girls in STEM
In 2019, Mastercard commissioned a study to understand gender and generational differences surrounding perceptions and attitudes of STEM-based topics and programs. It also explored challenges and motivations students cited for pursuing college majors and careers path.
The study showed that females are less confident, receive less encouragement and need more mentors in STEM. Mastercard’s Girls4Tech program provides each of those elements to young women.
To learn more about Girls4Tech and access the online lessons, please visit Girls4Tech Connect.
About Mastercard, www.mastercard.com
Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.
