Today was my first Cupcake 'n Code workshop!
Almost all 30 of the registered girls showed up, which was awesome! They all enjoyed the cupcakes and coding with each other- making friends with those with similar interests. For the workshop, we used Google's MadeWithCode resource, which is similar to Scratch, however, it is made specifically for girls. It shows that coding can be interdisciplinary, it can be combined with art, music, fashion, animation, etc. One of the girls came up to me after the event and said "I've done Hour of Code at school, but this was way more interesting and fun!" With that, I felt so accomplished, as I had showed girls that coding can be fun and can parallel their personal interests. My goal for this event was to teach girls something they wouldn't learn at school, and since my community focuses more on the physical sciences and neglects computer science- this is something the girls would otherwise, not be exposed to. Special thank you to my parents who helped me set up the room and accompanied me to approach sponsors, etc. Also, thank you to my close friend, Usha [pictured above], who assisted me with debugging code, photography and clean up!
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Just picked up my cupcakes today! They are so cute and I am so happy with how they turned out.
I hope the girls enjoy them tomorrow! I decided to get cupcakes catered from Giant! They discounted from an original price of $70 for 50 cupcakes and brought it down to $38. I gave them the design and they said it was doable to make them by Saturday, just in time for Sunday's big kickoff event.
Also, a very kind soul from my community's Facebook page wanted to donate, so I stopped by her place today to pick up the money. She gave a generous donation of $40- which covered the whole cost of the cupcakes! I am so grateful for my amazing community and their open-mindedness to my initiative, encouraging girls to explore programming! After school today, my dad and I went to various stores that sell cupcakes for donations or discounts on cupcakes. Some of the stores we checked out included Harris Teeter, Giant, Red Velvet Cupcakery and Georgetown Cupcake.
I brought with me a flier for Cupcakes 'n Code and the design I wanted. All of the stores simply wanted me to email their managers the details and how many cupcakes I wanted (50). I was so content with how kind everybody was towards my event and they personally wanted to know more to spread the word for me. I will update soon with the final design and from whom I get my cupcakes catered from.
You wouldn't believe it, but I asked my mom to post a blurb about my Cupcakes 'n Code event with the registration link on Facebook and it blew up!
In simply 24-hours, I went from 0 to 30 registrants. So much so, that I had to disable the registration! Additionally, a lot of people who have children that are too young or too old for my event are offering to volunteer or sponsor cupcake donations! I couldn't have asked for a better community that is so open to this new idea.
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So, as part of the application for the She++ fellowship summit, we are given the opportunity to either write about our initiative or make a video. Since I can show better than I can tell, I decided to make a video.
One of my awesome friends, Melanie, gave me some pro tips today on how to video edit using iMovie (you should check out her capstone here). I hope I can pull off a cool looking video that effectively portrays my ideas before the 30th (when the application is due). Wish me luck! Just created a poster for my upcoming event! I am just about ready to start hanging these up in various places around my community. Instead of posting these in places kids would look, I'm posting them where parents would, because they are the ones signing them up. Also, my community has an active Facebook page that most parents are on, so I will definitely be making a post on there soon! I really hope I get a good amount of interest. Through my #include fellowship, I was assigned a mentor- who is so awesome! She will also be filling the role as my capstone mentor throughout this process.
Her name is Samm and she is a sophomore in college! We chatted via Google Hangouts for the first time today, despite our constant email chains since November. She has been super helpful in terms of ideas as well as support. I recorded our video call, however the audio portion of the footage seems to be missing- so I don't know what's up with that, so enjoy this screen-cap of Samm telling me loads of cool ways I can beef up my website and promote my event. |
TanyaJust a techie teen spreading around the coding superpower. Archives
June 2017
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