Our greenlight girls are absolutely incredible – strong, intelligent, and curious young girls, and we never fail to be impressed by their determination and capability to see a future full of possibilities. Recently, we've had such fun seeing silly scientists, innovative engineers, resourceful technicians, and more emerge as the girls get messy with hands-on and interactive workshops and activities. And we consider ourselves really lucky, because in only one month it’s 1500 girls that we met. Yes, 1500 in 1 month; it’s like meeting 50 energetic and enthusiastic kids per DAY! Pfew! This month, we went from Brussels to NYC, to Mexico, to India (three times!), to New Jersey, to China, to Russia and back to Belgium again… Ready to read all about it?
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On November 3, our three amazing volunteers of the day (hello, Jelena, Thais and Alexaundra) gathered in Towson, MD, USA for a new g4g in the community w/ SBD! Once again, we joined forces with Stanley Black & Decker for the 2nd annual International Girls Day at their HQ in Maryland. 60 girls came and explored all the fun in STEM, they built bristlebots able to draw, extracted their DNA to put it in a necklace, or event, discovered the secrets behind slime!
Check out our facebook album to see all the photos taken this day!
On November 7, you would have found Alex and Loredana in Mexico for our first g4g Day @Mexico City w/ Covestro! 65 girls and 20 volunteers joined to the facilities of Covestro for a unique opportunity to see an insider's look into a day in the life of a polymer chemist as they tested out polymer worms, coding, DNA extraction, and engineer paper planes with their sustainable wish for the future on it. Girls were amazed to discover all the different things that we could do with chemistry and they also shared with us that the focus on sustainability inspired them to build a brighter and greener world. Wow!
On November 9, it’s in the US again that Alex and our 20 volunteers of the day brought STEMtastic workshops for the second g4g Day @Jackson Heights, NYC! During the day, more than 80 kids got to experience five of our fun and interactive workshops; from learning math and statistics with chocolate to discovering biology with DNA extractions, to chemistry with polymer worms, they all proved so inspired and determined! Don’t believe us? At the snap circuits, a group refused to move on to a different project until they got it… they spent nearly the entire workshop figuring out how a specific circuit worked. And guess what? They got it!
That’s in New Jersey that Alex finished her American tour this Fall, with the first g4g Day @Nokia Bell Labs in New Providence (where the telephone was invented by A. G. Bell!) on November 13. A massive thanks to the 30 volunteers from Nokia who helped us during the day and who crafted amazing workshops showcasing Nokia technology and all the fun in STEM. Our lucky 100 greenlight girls were the very first ones to test out the latest innovation from Nokia – the Virtual Factory! They got to be immersed in a virtual world where they tested robotic arms controlling robotics. They also visited the unique “Anechoic Chamber”, a room designed to completely absorb reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves! As our event took place during Global Entrepreneurship Week, we even brought in a design-thinking activity where girls had to create businesses, inventions, and more to better their home, community, or school.
Between November 17 and 18, you would have seen our inspiring g4g Founder & engineer, Melissa Rancourt, encourage nearly 200 girls in Shanghai and Hangzhou, China at the innovative facilities of Nokia, reminding them that science & technology is linked to absolutely everything around them and, especially, to any future career path they may choose. The girls loved exploring mathematics with chocolate, the chemical reaction of explosive bath bombs, and more as they became Nokia Certified Future Innovators in Technology!
On November 24, our 9th annual g4g Day @Brussels took place at the International School of Brussels in our headquarter city. We welcomed 300 girls & over 75 volunteers from Belgium and the Netherlands to join us for a day of polymer cupcakes, robotics, lasers, the physics of Rubens' Flame Tube, invention with design thinking, fruit batteries, and more! Partners like Solvay, Nokia, Procter & Gamble, Baxter, Covestro, Stanley Black & Decker, and Muntpunt Library joined us – plus, a very special guest speaker.... Zora, the robot! She even managed to show off her dancing skills!
On November 28, we partnered up with Stanley Black & Decker for the launch of our g4g Day @Khimki, Moscow! 60 passionate girls came to one of the local schools in Moscow region to experiment STEM in all its forms. From chemistry with bath bomb to electrical engineering with drawing robots, to building frames and decorating them with laser with SBD tools, the girls, helped by 15 wonderful volunteers spent a brilliant afternoon, surrounded by hands-on science and fun learning!
At the same time, and for the past few months already, we’ve been working in India to bring hands-on science and technology to over 2,700 girls thanks to an incredible global partner, Covestro, and along with the Nehru Science Centre & Chandra Mohan Foundation. Girls had the chance to converse & hear from keynote speakers in both English and the local languages, and had the opportunity to try out polymer chemistry, bio-engineering with DNA, or electronics, where they created their own Vibrobots, design their own sustainable invention, and more. In November, we had events in Calicut between November 7-9, in Noida region between November 21-23, and finally, at the end of the month, in Dharmapur between Nov. 29 and 30… a total of more than 1170 girls reached and inspired in India this month: wow, another new record! Come back early January to read our blog post dedicated to this Indian journey and hear about all our upcoming projects in India!
