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Virginia Tech welcomes TechGirls for 12-day camp

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Category: culture Video duration: Virginia Tech welcomes TechGirls for 12-day camp

TechGirls is an international exchange program designed to inspire and empower high school girls from the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia in STEM. The 60+ girls visited Virginia Tech to learn from faculty experts in coding, programming, and cybersecurity. They also visited local businesses for a job shadowing day.

Their visit was facilitated by the Center for Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED) at Virginia Tech. TechGirls is a program of the U.S. Department of State, administered by Legacy International. 

[00:00:03] >> I've never been in U.S. before, so this is my first time. The only word to describe it is amazing. That. In my country, I really, like, had no friends because I wanted to get education, I didn't want to, you know, to prepare [for] marriage stuff. And here in TechGirls I have, like, 51 of them and they all share my interests. [00:00:30] TechGirls is a program of the State Department, it is a grant that is administered by Legacy International, they bring two cohorts of students: one from North Africa and the Middle East, and a second cohort, which is new this year, from Central Asia. Of young women in high school who are very interested in technology and they spend three weeks here in the United States, they take a 5-day coding class, a 5-day cybersecurity class, they work on a community service project. [00:01:00] TechGirls is an amazing program, in which you can test not only your knowledges, but also your experience, meet, like, super people who are already experienced in some spheres you even didn't recognize and I really like coding now. This was amazing experience for me, it was a lot of fun, we had a lot of fun in learning a lot of things. [00:01:26] So that was just an idea for you guys. We did amazing course with professors here at Virginia Tech, they taught us about Javascript, I had no idea about how to create games and now I have my own game like I learned to build it, that's so great. So I think that cultural exchange, expanding international outreach and opportunities is really critical to the mission at Virginia Tech.