Girls Do Tech hopes to ’empower and inspire’ budding engineers

From a bike helmet that indicates left or right with a simple tilt to the head to a bracelet made from headphones, wearable technology promises to be all the rage at a special event aimed at budding female techies.

Girls Do Tech, organised by Jewish Interactive and Intu, and media-sponsored by Jewish News, is calling on youngsters aged 12 to 18 to take part in the two-day extravaganza in October.

Participants will work in teams of five, alongside a tech and business mentor, to design, create and make their ideas, before presenting them to the judging panel, which includes James Rosenthal, director of Global Agency at Google, Tamar Roth, product development engineer for SODA and Francine Wolfisz, features editor at Jewish News.

Jewish Interactive came up with the event after noticing last year’s hackathon day attracted a very small percentage of girls.

Pia Azzuri, director of partnerships and events at Jewish Interactive, says: “At our last tech day, out of 50 children only five were girls.

“According to the Women’s Engineering Society, a survey carried out in 2017 shows that only 11 percent of the workforce is female and the UK has the lowest percentage of female engineering professionals in Europe.

“We are hoping our event will empower and inspire girls to embrace technology, to see it with a real relevance to their lives and the jobs of tomorrow.”

Girls Do Tech takes place on Saturday, 6 October, 8.30pm to 10pm and Sunday, 7 October, 9am to 7pm, in Westminster. For more information, visit jewishinteractive.org/girls-do-tech/