But we don’t want to stop there

There is a culture among women in tech that everyone is aware of but none of the different approaches to close the gender gap attempt to resolve. It creates the idea that women need sort of a separate universe in which women can be tech professionals. Instead of trying to be inclusive, it’s an alternate reality world.

In practice and in the greater domain of technology people are not surrounded by women alone. By encouraging our members to attend workshops, seminars, conferences, and hackathons, we aim to expose them to the greater community of computing. We aspire to form a group that will be empowered to take the initiative to attend these events of their own volition and actively contribute to their professional development outside of the classroom.

There are many organizations whose goal is to close the gender gap in technology and they have done an excellent work. But we can’t stay in the middle of the road, creating, inadvertently, a comfort zone.

We need to get them inside the area of action. OUT of the comfort zone.

That’s why I’m expecting from #include<girls> to be running two phases constantly and simultaneously. We’re not only aiming to recruit more women to the tech industry but also encourage and prepare them to not to be afraid of expose themselves out there and be absolutely awesome because of their skills.

We are pleased that we have reached our first year and we have already started to count our achievements in the phase one:

• Tripled the number of women in the introductory course at the CS Department of The University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras
• Increasing +20 and men allies
• Started a chapter outside our college, in the University of Puerto Rico at Bayamón (shot out to the primary members: Tamara Rosario, Marie A Zacarias, Chantel Cabrera, Yadiel Cabrera among others) for being such a great leaders! keep it up!
• Helped to increase the number of students in general at our Department in the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras

Throughout our first year we’ve been supported by a lot of people from our community and we want to publicly thank them for being such an important part of our mission.

First leaders + allies!

First of all, to our advisor Dr. Patricia Ordóñez because without her concern #include<girls> would never have been born. Roxana González and Cassandra Schaening for being tirelessly working to made it works! + all those men allies that were always there showing us they care.

First Workshop!

First Stickers & T-Shirts!

Axel Rivera made us our very first stickers (they were everywhere!) and Froilan Irizarry sponsored us the first shirts! so much love! ❤

First sponsored activity!

Ramphis Castro was our first sponsor($$)/guest as part of the Startups of Puerto Rico community. He invited us a coffee and chatted with us about startups he has been working with and invested in.

First Chapter!

These are some of the leaders of the first chapter in the University of Puerto Rico at Bayamón (from left to right: Emmanuel Luciano, Chantel Cabrera, Marie Zacarias, Yadiel Cabrera and José Padilla) Keep up the great work!

First fundraiser!

Thanks to all of the contributions to the Piloto Labs Fundraiser hosted by Piloto151, first co-working space at Puerto Rico, Piloto Labs was able to raise over $30k in funding that will benefit the startup‬ and tech‬ community in Puerto Rico including #include<girls> and others like Startups of Puerto Rico; Code4PuertoRico; Codetrotters; Diseñado en Puerto Rico; 1 Million Cups Puerto Rico among others. The community support has been always there!

This year we’ll be working hard as always to reach our phase two. To create leaders and advocates who wants to be as great as they can be.

As part of this resolution, we’re looking for volunteers to be part of our committee and work with us in achieving our goals bigger and better! Fill this out if your are interested in support us in any way and we’ll contact you by the end of the month to make it happen. Also, if you’re interested in start a new chapter, fill out this form.