Tomorrow is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, dedicated to celebrating the achievements and education of women working in scientific fields.
At Paisley YMCA, we create opportunities for young people to participate in STEAM-related learning. Our activities focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics. Every Wednesday, we create space for girls and young women to build their STEM capital using fun, engaging and innovative activities and on this day, we are celebrating their achievements and accomplishments as they build their STEM capital each week in our space.
STEM Girls gives our young women and non-binary young people a space in which they are encouraged to engage with various STEAM related youth projects. As a result, they have produced some incredible work in the years since the club’s inception including coding courses, artistic projects and podcast recording.
Over the next few weeks at STEM Girls, we are collaborating with The Young Woman’s Movement to provide a series of workshops which involve creating a piece of art based on the theme ‘re-imagining Scotland for women and girls. The art will be proudly exhibited in the Scottish Parliament. All young people will receive a voucher for their participation.
In this first week, our STEM Girls mapped out what activism means to them and which causes their project will focus on. They were shown some great examples of feminist art and activism to give them inspiration and wrote down as many ideas as possible on a giant mind-map.
We asked our young people what they are most looking forward to after the first week of the project;
“I am looking forward to making rights happen!”
“Changing people’s perspective on racism/LGBTQ+!”
“Having fun!”
“To be respected!”
“Using clay!”
On this day we celebrate the amazing achievements of women in the fields of science and at Paisley YMCA, we also aim to continue to promote and encourage the importance of young women and girls participating and succeeding in STEAM-related education, going on to make their own incredible mark through as many opportunities as possible.
STEM Girls takes place every Wednesday at Paisley YMCA. Details for sign up are available on our Eventbrite page.