- ESA aims to help black girls and women from underserved communities to take up STEAM subjects.
- The drive has managed to educate over 20000 girls in the subjects of technology.
The ESA and its philanthropic arm called ESA Foundation supports Black Girls Code with $1 million for education and mentoring programs that include girls and young women who are interested in technology. The drive backs up Black Girl Code’s initiative to impart education in coding and technology to millions of girls and young women by 2040. It will help ESA to recruit diverse people to learn science, technology, engineering, art, and math subjects (STEAM).
Statement from ESA CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis:
“We’re really excited about it because this is going to expand a lot of opportunities for learning more and helping each of their chapters that we’re working with,” said ESA CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis in an interview with GamesBeat. “And our members are excited because they’re located in so many different cities across the country. It allows many of our members and others to participate as mentors.”
Women have had a share of success to themselves yet more work is required to be done. According to The National Girls Collaborative Project, women only earn 18% of computer science’s UG degrees in the USA. But, women make almost 47% of the employed adults in the US where only 25% of them hold a computing role, claims the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT). Of 25% female employees in tech, only 3% and 1% of black and Hispanic women work in the tech field, respectively.
The ESA Foundation has awarded more than 400 college scholarships since the year 2007. Now, it plans to collaborate with Black Girls Code across several states of the USA. These states include Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Raleigh, N.C., San Francisco, and Washington D.C. The multi-year commitment will include direct financial support and investment in volunteer time. It will also derive resources from industry to support curricula, workshops, and mentoring programs through the brands that are recognized worldwide. ESA foundation’s executive director, Anastasia Staten, states that the initiative won’t have in-person programs but it will offer a lot of online education.
“We’re going to be able to roll it out to seven chapters, and then all the girls across all the chapters virtually who want to participate in workshops and studio tours,” Staten said. “It’s a really great organization.”
About Black Girls Code:
Kimberly Bryant is the founder of the Black Girls Code. She founded it in 2011, in Oakland, California to get her daughter and other girls excited for programming. Bryant’s daughter now goes to a college and the Black Girls Code is functional in 15 different cities across the country and South Africa. The drive has introduced computer programming and technology to girls in the age window of 7-17 years from underrepresented communities. It provides workshops, hackathons, and after-school programs to run the initiative. So far, the initiative has educated over 20,000 girls.
“When I was younger and participated in activities involving games and technology, I was the only person who looked like me in the room,” said Sloane Miller, an ESA Foundation scholar and North Carolina A&T State University student who participated in Black Girls Code programs for three years, in a statement. “Black Girls Code taught me I could combine my love of video games with my passion for tech and develop skills I can use in college and my career.”
More about how ESA is supporting Black Girls Code:
The goal behind ESA is to help Black Girls Code fund various interactive education and mentoring programs in seven cities of the USA. It also plans to help 7000 to 10000 colored women from underserved communities prepare for STEAM careers based in the gaming and tech industries. Game companies will form a significant part that provides funds, resources, and hands-on mentoring programs.
“One of the things that we’re really focusing on is building infrastructure, with Black Girls Code, that includes beginning to create curricula for workshops, setting up some formal mentorship opportunities, and agreements with ESA member companies,” Staten said. “We can also create meaningful experiences for so many professionals out there that want to be mentors and volunteers, to help these young women find their path, celebrate their own success stories, as they’re developing skills around technology, and hopefully, give an introduction to the video game industry.”
“We were excited about partnering with them and with our foundation because of the work that Anastasia had done in creating scholarship opportunities for minorities and women,” Pierre-Louis said. “Also, we can provide them with opportunities to learn about our industry, learn about the skills, and showcase our industries to them but also provide opportunities for our industry to partner with them as mentors, guest speakers, and mentors. So we’re really excited about helping propel what they do.”
Recently, ESA announced support to fellowship with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation which is based in Washington, D.C.
