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A few months ago, I blogged about the benefits of holding a Mother Daughter TEA (Technology Engineering and Aptitude) workshop. This event is by far, the best I've ever seen at reaching girls. We've had fantastic results (100% positive feedback) in that the girls are very engaged and having fun with engineering at the same time. We make hovercrafts, build towers or make helmets and jewelry. The girls are always well behaved (probably because their mom is sitting right there) so it's not a difficult workshop to manage. As you know, it's extremely important for girls to have career support at home - especially for technical careers. One group of girls sent us a picture of themselves doing more engineering at home right after the workshop. I believe that if their mom hadn't attended, she might have been resistant to the project they were attempting (let's just say it was big). I've even had several moms tell me they wanted to become engineers too!
Since that time, we've have requests for so many workshops that we decided to hold a Train the Trainer event (October 2, 2010). Come to this workshop to learn to facilitate many different engineering activities, get strategies on working with and motivating girls, and leave with your own toolkit to hold this same workshop in your community. The toolkit, in a rolling duffle bag, comes with everything you need to lead 40 Mother/Daughter teams through a day of experiences - the materials for all the activities, T-shirts for the girls, a take-home engineering project for each girl, a booklet on engineering careers, and teaching engineering resource kits for teachers that attend so that the excitement about engineering that these girls experience doesn't end with the day. You'll also received detailed instructions and prizes that you can give away during the workshop. If you are trying to build more girls into your pipeline, this is a great way to start.
For information on holding a workshop, visit: http://www.engineeringedu.com/pw/mdtea.html
For information on attending a training, visit: http://www.engineeringedu.com/pw/teatraining.html
To stay informed, join the Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=119643131382309&ref=mf
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