Recently, I met 500 people at the movies.

As the Executive Director of Techbridge Girls in Greater Seattle, I spend a lot of time encouraging girls, particularly girls of color from low-income households, to try STEM. So when one of my board members suggested that we rally local professional women in tech to sponsor our girls to see the film Hidden Figures, I immediately said yes.

“Yeah,” I thought, “we can probably get ten volunteers to each buy a ticket for themselves and for one of the girls in our after-school program. Maybe we’ll share some popcorn and sodas and take a few photos.”

Three months later, on Martin Luther King Day, we were overwhelmed by demand for the event. We had sold out 185-, 220- , 240-, 285- and 428-seat theaters, and eventually upgraded to the largest house at AMC Pacific Place in downtown Seattle. In the end, more than 500 people attended the event – a private screening of the movie, followed by an inspiring panel of women in technology and aerospace. Generous donors sponsored movie tickets, soda, popcorn, and transportation for 140 Techbridge girls and family members.  The crowd was giddy with excitement at honoring Dr. King’s Legacy by viewing this true, untold story of three African American women – a mathematician, an engineer, and a computer programmer, who worked at NASA. Everyone oohed, aahed, and cheered throughout the film. We were thrilled with how the public and how our girls and families received it. What Hidden Figures conveyed to our girls, in a glossy, compelling, Hollywood way, is this: women of color have been breaking barriers in STEM for decades, and each of you can do it, too.  

Our challenge now is to make sure our girls believe – and strive to achieve – that reality, and we need your help.

Don’t get me wrong – our Techbridge Girls program is great. We created a high-quality curriculum that combines inquiry-based instruction and hands-on activities that are linked to public education standards. We train teachers so that they feel more confident and prepared to support girls’ STEM ambitions. We empower parents, so that they feel more comfortable talking to their daughters about education and careers. We take girls on field trips to local STEM employers so they can imagine themselves in fulfilling, high-paying, cycle-of-poverty-escaping careers. 

All of those elements are compelling, but what really moves girls is meeting women in STEM careers. Consider what one of our students said at the end of the year, after giving Techbridge Girls a high “grade”:

“I give Techbridge this grade because I wanted to get out of Techbridge but then I went to a field trip to Google [and] a person that worked there helped [me] see what coding was and things like that, and I started liking it all over again, and I’m really proud of myself.”

As illustrated by this simple statement – in this case, encouragement from a role model – can fundamentally change a girl’s life, not to mention the lives of the seven people whose jobs she would help to create. Pretty powerful stuff.

As noted by Gizmodo, we should share with young people the stories of the women in Hidden Figures, and it’s just as important for them to meet real-life, modern role models that they can relate to. Many of our girls have no professional women in their lives, let alone women in STEM careers, and even fewer of them have met women of color in those fields. So, we introduce role models to our girls, when they visit our classrooms, and when we visit STEM employers in Seattle. And we need your help. Our programs serve more than 200 girls who need inspiration from real, live role models. Please consider hosting a field trip or visiting our classrooms, or sponsoring a girl’s participation. We only ask for a one-time commitment, but I’ll be honest – most of our role models return time and again. Once you see the impact you can make, it’s pretty hard not to come back.

Techbridge Girls is grateful for the support of IBM, Washington STEM, and the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship for making the event possible.