Scratch Education Collaborative Spotlight: Sisters of Code
By Melodie D
This post is the fourth in a series highlighting the work of the Scratch Education Collaborative (SEC). In this series, we’ll introduce you to some core principles, people, and practices that help shape how we think about creative, collaborative learning.
Sisters of Code is the first female coding club in Cambodia. By creating a joyful space in their free after-school program for female students to learn about technology, they are helping young women, ages 10 to 20, to build confidence as well as empowering and preparing them for a successful digital future.
Though women enjoy a greater level of equality and representation in certain spaces in the Cambodian community, they are still underrepresented in the technology sector and industry. According to Sisters of Code Project Coordinator Sokuntepy, “Only 10% of female students in Cambodia choose to study technology-related subjects and only 30% of them go on to [pursue] jobs in the field of information technology. The lack of female role models, mentors, confidence, and opportunities, continues to hold many young Cambodian women back from learning important digital skills and getting actively involved in the digital economy.”
Sisters of Code works to build and inspire this confidence and community for young women in coding through their coding clubs. After-school club facilitators encourage teamwork and collaboration during coding club time. “We ask students to think about their own games or animations they want to create. A trainer guides students through the tools in Scratch,” and, Sokuntepy emphasizes, “encourages students to decide in teams what they like, what they want to explore, and what they want to create.”
Through the Sisters of Code coding clubs which nurture and foster playful, collaborative coding, technology becomes, “a tool to bring to life, [one’s] own vision.”
We had the chance to connect with a few of the young women who have participated in the Sisters of Code coding clubs to learn how they have used technology as a tool to bring their visions to life and how Sisters of Code and the Scratch community have helped shape their perspectives on technology and coding.
Coca
17 year old Coca is a 12th grader enrolled at a Cambodian public school. Through her participation in the Sisters of Code coding club, she learned about, “cybersecurity, developing games and stories, programming languages, creating websites, and how to write CVs [curriculum vitaes].”
Coca discovered Scratch and learned how to use it to program games and projects through Sisters of Code. She recalls, “I was asked to submit different projects like stories, animations, and […] games.” She particularly enjoyed creating games and would watch YouTube tutorials to find inspiration for project ideas. Creating Scratch projects was not always straightforward. Coca shared that the process was sometimes a “rollercoaster.” She shared, “I would try to put different blocks to see how it worked, but would end up failing. Later, I started fixing it and it worked normally. The next day, another bug popped up. I even needed to rebuild the code again to see how it worked.”
When Coca would encounter bugs and issues with her code, she would, “research solutions through different tutorials.” She would also look for comments and feedback in the Scratch online community to find ways to troubleshoot her code. Not only did she find help in the online community, she found inspiration.
“Seeing talented people out there around my age achieving their goals, motivates me to work harder and improve myself. I was deeply inspired and amazed by the creators and their accomplishments.”
In the process of debugging and solving problems while coding with Scratch, Coca continued to learn how to be creative; visualize the design, background, music, and concept of her games; analyze the Scratch editor to see which blocks would help the script run smoothly and debug her code; and problem-solve. In addition, she added, she was able to “discover [her] own innovation and imagination styles, explore and create.”
Somavatey
17 year old Vatey is currently a high school student. She discovered Scratch when she joined Sisters of Code’s 16 week program, where she recalled particularly enjoying creating “parking games” (Scratch games where she had to develop code to park a car in a parking lot). Her interest was piqued when she saw that coding blocks in Scratch could make sprites move and she described that “Scratch has been a source of inspiration to learn about coding.” Moreover, she shared that through the online community, she could “explore more games that [other] Scratch users published [and] get more ideas from them to put into my projects.”
Not only did Vatey’s time as a participant in Sisters of Code inspire her to learn about coding, she was also motivated to take the skills she learned and share them with others as an ambassador through Sisters of Code’s Ambassadors Program, where she’s running her own coding club in her community, and “teaching female students in Cambodia how to code using code.org, Scratch, HTML/CSS in an 18 week program.” She shared, “I focus my efforts [on] encouraging more girls to study technology [because] in Cambodia, many girls think that technology is not for [them].”
Not only has Vatey been able to help and facilitate spaces for other young women in Cambodia to learn about coding, as an Ambassador, she’s also learned and practiced a number of new skills, including: technical skills in cyber security and internet protection and soft skills in leadership development, project planning/management, and presenting. She’s excited to see “more girls [becoming] interested in technology” because of her work and is “so proud to be a Sisters of Code Ambassador.”
What’s Next?
In addition to providing free after-school coding clubs for young Cambodian women, Sokuntepy also shared about new Sisters of Code initiatives that will increase the Cambodian community’s access to creative coding opportunities. Not only do they want to bring creative coding opportunities to young women, they also want to bring the same opportunities to public school teachers by conducting a “creative coding workshop with an aim to introduce basic principles of coding from Scratch resources on how to make an educational game and animation.” These workshops will empower teachers to code and equip them to “teach students coding concepts to [help] students improve their creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration by working together.”
They have also created a Sisters of Code Ambassadors Program, which students like Vatey have participated in. Sokuntepy describes the Ambassadors Program as, “training trainers [which] any Cambodian girls, 18 and older, can join and get trained as a trainer to start [their] own club for Sisters of Code.” Not only does this teach young women valuable leadership skills, it has helped Sisters of Code extend their reach in bringing creative coding opportunities to their surrounding communities. Through this program, they have already reached students in 16 provinces throughout Cambodia. By giving students the opportunity to develop digital skills for free and work with an Ambassador on project-based coding problems, Sokuntepy says, students are able to, “grow their confidence since they see a woman can be a leader in the tech field [while] learning to code with our interesting curriculum. This can break stereotypes that stand in their way and inspire them to choose majors and careers in tech.”
Follow us on Twitter @Scratch and search #ScratchEducationCollaborative for current updates on the SEC.
If you’d like to learn more about Sisters of Code you can visit their website at: https://www.sistersofcode.org/
If you’d like to connect with Sisters of Code, you can connect with them on: LinkedIn and Facebook
These interviews have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
