Each Thursday night, Jennifer, a Malahat Nation Elder, has an important job to do. As a facilitator of the Circles of Care-Circles of Courage girls’ group, she’s in charge of the carpool.

Before each session, she makes the drive to pick up girls from her community and the neighbouring Cowichan Nation. When the program first launched in 2016, the girls didn’t say much during carpool. Now, when they see Jennifer’s car pull up, they come bounding out of their homes, full of excitement. The girls’ group has become one of the best parts of their week.

Research shows that girls as young as 6 have gendered ideas about intelligence, and who is best suited to careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

TechGyrls is a program that gives girls ages 9 to 13 the opportunity to explore, create, design, and share in all things STEM.  Funded by the Canadian Women’s Foundation’s Girls’ Fund, this YWCA Cambridge program is empowering girls to engage in STEM when society tells them they can’t.

The program doesn’t have a curriculum. Instead it’s led by the girls’ interests and ideas, making each program as unique as the girls who participate. Naturally, when the program received funding to purchase a 3D printer, the TechGyrls were excited to learn how to use it.

After spending some time learning about how the printer worked and designing their own products to print, one TechGyrls group at a Cambridge Public School decided they could to do more. They looked to eNABLING the future, an online community that openly shares the files and instructions needed to print and produce prosthetic hands.

This post has been edited and was originally published on CarlyFriesen.com

I was, as Britney Spears would put it, not a girl, not yet a woman, when I excitedly started my first year of Engineering at the University of Guelph. I thought I was going to become an engineer, change the world, and bust through the glass ceiling Wonder Woman style. I had absolutely no doubts in my mind that I could and would do it.

As time passed, I started to wonder how thick this glass ceiling really was. With each year I began to see gender come into play more and more.