03 Nov 2020
#STEM4Every1, #STEMingUP, Ambassadors, Awards, Blog, Contest, Girls in STEM, Media, STEM Spark, Success, Technology

Doina Oncel, Founder/CEO at hEr VOLUTION nominated for the #WomenTech Global Awards 2020!

For immediate release:

Toronto, ON Canada – November 3, 2020: Doina Oncel, Founder/CEO of hEr VOLUTION has been nominated for the #WomenTech Global Awards 2020, Women in Tech Ally of the Year Category.  Global Tech Woman Awards aims to celebrate 100 000 Women In Tech who are driving change with purpose and impact.

This award nomination is a great recognition for our Founder/CEO, Doina Oncel as she has been an ally for women in tech since the founding of hEr VOLUTION, back in 2013. Doina founded hEr VOLUTION to support young women from underserved communities from Ontario by proving them with access to STEM based education. Doina has made significant impact on about 4000 young women in STEM through direct and indirect programming and has developed partnership with various industry partners such as Shopify, Salesforce, Citrix Canada, Capital One, General Motors. Through her leadership the organization has received government funding from Ontario Trillium Foundation, Government of Canada and  Leacross Foundation to name a few.

“I am extremely grateful for this nomination and I truly hope that it inspires others to join this movement with us in becoming allies with me and help make STEM education accessible to all.” says Doina Oncel, Founder/CEO of hEr VOLUTION

To support this nomination, we invite you to visit the nomination page HERE and vote by sharing with your network. Your votes for this nomination will help inspire young women to embrace careers in STEM.

About hEr VOLUTION

hEr VOLUTION is an award-winning charitable organization providing innovative education and employment services to girls and young women in STEM. Our mission is to advance education by providing workshops and instructional seminars on topics relating to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) for low income and marginalized youth with a focus on girls and young women.

For more information, visit www.hervolution.org

For interview requests for or quotes from hEr VOLUTION contact:

mediarelations@hervolution.org

www.hervolution.org

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02 Nov 2020
#GivingTuesdayCA, #STEM4Every1, Blog, Fundraising, Girls in STEM, Media, Technology, Volunteers

Let the #Unselfie season begin

GivingTuesday Countdown Red

Let’s start this blog by sharing about #GivingTuesday. This may seem familiar from when we first shared this campaign with you, a couple of years ago. Thank you for joining us! Your support helped us raise awareness towards our cause and we are very grateful.

What is #GivingTuesday?

GivingTuesday is a global day of giving. After the sales of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, GivingTuesday is a time to celebrate and encourage activities that support charities and nonprofits. Whether it’s making a donation, volunteering time, helping a neighbour or spreading the word, GivingTuesday is a movement for everyone who wants to give something back. #GivingTuesdayCA is the Canadian version of #GivingTuesday.

How is hEr VOLUTION engaging you on #GivingTuesdayCA this year?

For 4 weeks before Giving Tuesday, starting on November 1, 2020, we encourage our supporters to help raise funds, but mostly raise awareness about the cause they care about, in this case, hEr VOLUTION. Here is how it works:

  • Step 1: Download & Print the #Unselfie poster

  • Step 2: Write down why you support hEr VOLUTION

  • Step 3: Take a picture holding the poster (hint: get a friend to take a picture of you holding the poster)

  • Step 4: Post the picture on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) telling the world why you support hEr VOLUTION using the #Unselfie & #GivingTuesdayCA hashtags and tag us at @her_volution

  • Step 5: Tell your friends about this campaign and ask them to support your cause with you!

That’s it! We can’t wait to see your social media activity!

 

24 Sep 2020
#STEM4Every1, #STEMingUP, #STEMingUPSpotlight, Blog, Girls in STEM, STEM Spark, STEMingUPSpotlight, Success, Technology

STEMing UP 2020 Project Demos (JavaScript Cohort)

How did you enjoy the project demos from the Python cohort that we sent last week? We included another treat for you in this email below. Please check out the project demos from this year’s STEMing UP JavaScript cohort. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay informed of all of our updates (we don’t always share them on here)

 

STEMing UP 2020 Project Demo – ChatEasy

STEMing UP 2020 – JavaScript Group 2 presenting their solution to this year’s COVID-19 challenge “Care for our Seniors”

 

STEMing UP 2020 Project Demo – Fit2getThere

STEMing UP 2020 – JavaScript Group 1 presenting their solution to this year’s COVID-19 challenge “Youth Mental Health In Pandemic/Crisis”

 

STEMing UP 2020 Project Demo – Unwind Your Mind

STEMing UP 2020 – JavaScript Group 3 presenting their solution to this year’s COVID-19 challenge “Care for our Seniors”

10 Aug 2020
#STEM4Every1, #STEMingUP, #STEMingUPPartnerFeature, #STEMingUPSpotlight, Media, STEM Spark, STEMingUPSpotlight, Success, Technology

How #STEMingUP Students & Mentors Worked Together to Complete Their Program Challenge

STEMing UP Program is known for training young women for a post secondary education and a career in technology. However, one other focus, and an equally important one, is to create opportunities for the young women participants to start a portfolio of work. For some of these young women this is their very first opportunity to do so. 

The portfolio of work can be anything that the girls have worked on in the program based on the challenges brought on by a real business that we work with in order to create these real life work experience opportunities for our program participants. It can be anything from an app to a website. 

The key ingredients in making this experience a success are the mentors who are giving their time and expertise to train the young women every step of the way. The mentors have met with these young women at least once per week to help them develop a website for a woman led business that we identified as a business challenge in the 2019 STEMing UP Program. 

Since we are getting closer to the end of the STEMing UP Program this year, we want to take this opportunity to highlight the experiences that the participants from 2019 program have had during this project creation as well as their biggest support, their mentors. 

More

07 Aug 2020
#GOstemWeek, #STEM4Every1, Ambassadors, Girls in STEM, STEM Spark, Success, Technology

City of Toronto continues to take a major step forward to support the next generation of girls through the proclamation of hEr VOLUTION’s GO!stem Week

TORONTO, August 7, 2020 – For the second year in a row, hEr VOLUTION received Strategic Protocol Message from City of Toronto Mayor, John Tory to officially welcome Toronto to GO!stem Week.

 

“We are very excited for the continuous recognition and support from the Mayor of Toronto, John Tory for the GO!stem Week which we will host this year for two consecutive weeks to help accommodate the virtual programming from which we had to pivot due to COVID-19. We have learned during this pandemic that technological skills are now more crucial than ever, and we are very grateful that the Mayor has joined us by officially sending a letter of proclamation of this event.” says hEr VOLUTION Founder, Doina Oncel.

Research shows that underrepresentation of Black and racialized women in STEM is still an issue in Canada and it is through programs like GO!stem where the industry joins to support us to ensure that the future of work is ready for the new world.

We’ve been working with Salesforce Women’s Network for 6 years in a row to bring together the GO!stem Program to girls interested in learning about technology in a fun and exciting way. Through this partnership we were able to deliver this program to over 150 girls from GTA. This year we will be hosting the GO!stem Program with Salesforce from August 10 to August 14, 2020 and girls in the program will be introduced to HTML, CSS, Java and Python learning.

This year, we are excited to be joined by GM Canada to help us expand the access to technology and innovative learning to a wider group of young women from across Ontario and we expect to have 30 young women, from August 17 to August 21, 2020 learn from GM professionals about technology and innovation through the GO!stem with GM Canada virtual program.

Additionally, given that this is the inaugural year for our Ambassador Program, where we welcome young women to share their voices and gain leadership skills, with 50% of them being former hEr VOLUTION students, we are very happy that the GO!stem Program has been a great learning experience for them as well and their involvement goes as far as planning and executing some of the lessons in this program as well.

 

About hEr VOLUTION

hEr VOLUTION is an award-winning charitable organization providing innovative education and employment services to girls and young women in STEM. Our mission is to advance education by providing workshops and instructional seminars on topics relating to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) for low income and marginalized youth with a focus on girls and young women.

For more information, visit www.hervolution.org

For interview requests for or quotes from hEr VOLUTION contact:

mediarelations@hervolution.org

www.hervolution.org

###

29 Jun 2020
#STEM4Every1, Blog, Girls in STEM, Media, Science

The Under-Representation of Black and Racialized Women in Canadian Academia

Given the need for people with a scientific background in the labour force, the underrepresentation of Black women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computer sciences) fields has attracted attention recently. The shortage of Black women in STEM is detrimental to them, since STEM fields are generally among the highest paying and fastest growing. Specifically, academic workforce is not as diverse as either the student body or the labour force. Therefore, even though universities across Canada have committed to equity and diversity, the same level of commitment isn’t apparently in academic staff and employment and wage equity in academia. In this article, we will explore the rate of employment and earnings wages of racialized men and women, compared to their white counterparts.

Racialized individuals (defined as non-white individuals) in Canada are significantly underrepresented in the college and university sector, at less than 15% of all instructors. Furthermore, racialized university teachers constitute fewer than 15% of all university instructors, which is significantly lower than both that of racialized students (36%) and that of racialized doctoral degree holders (31%). Therefore, a large proportion of racialized university graduates cannot secure a job in our universities.  At 10.7%, Black professors have the highest unemployment rate, compared to white professors and other racialized groups. Black university teachers, specifically, only comprise 2% of all university teachers, even though there has been a slight improvement in the representation of Black university teachers over the past decade (from 1.8% in 2006 to 2.0% in 2016) More