Status of Women Committee on Nov. 7th, 2017

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

As Pam indicated, we have members from the Boys & Girls Club, as well as Big Brothers Big Sisters here today.

Welcome to the committee. I hope that you learn lots today. Please feel free to speak to any of the members following the session.

Thank you.

We're now going to Emmanuella for three and a half minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Welcome to our committee and thank you for being with us today. I'm a high school teacher as well, so I've seen a lot of these issues in my classroom and a lot of the differences between girls and boys at the high school level.

You said that at age 12 girls will lose interest in technology, coding, and science in general, and also at age 12, a girl's self-esteem and confidence plummet, whereas a boy's will increase at that age. We see there's a huge difference there, and this puts girls at a complete disadvantage. What are the things that your program is doing to attract and keep girls in the program, to continue down this path?

[Carolyn Van]

Specifically, a big part of our program for high school girls goes beyond helping them develop computational skills. A great deal of it involves building that community where these girls can connect. We also bring them to conferences, and we get them involved with developing technologies through some of our partnering organizations.

We foster a community environment where these girls can learn to work together. We also expose them to communities and working groups, where they have the opportunity to work with people who are not like them. Our kids learning code program is as important as our girls learning code program, because it exposes these girls to an environment of working with a community of all genders. That community aspect is huge for teens. We also work with high school teachers. We visit high schools and primary schools with our code mobile, which is our computer lab on wheels, to help teachers learn how to continue that community aspect with the girls in their classrooms.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

By community aspect, do you mean that you have partnerships with companies in their communities?

[Carolyn Van]

Yes, we have partnerships. For example, we have partnerships with Google where Google will run some sort of event specifically for teen girls. They are after-school and weekend events, to accommodate high school girls' schedules. So yes, we partner with organizations.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Obviously, a lot of the barriers are caused by stereotypes. Do you address these specifically? How do you go about overcoming these obstacles?

[Carolyn Van]

We address this in the design process. We ensure that when we're designing technology education we are considering all sorts of diversity in thought at the table, and yes, that also means that women are part of that design process, our instructors and our mentors. We ensure there's a good distribution of diversity, gender diversity within that, and we also ensure that in the events we bring these girls to or that they get exposed to there is female representation within the STEM leaders they are learning from.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

That's excellent. Thank you very much, Carolyn.

We're now going to move to Rachael for three minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate the presentation you've delivered here today.

Can you talk about how you promote your programs, women in code and girls in code? How do you get the message out to Canadians and get them engaged in what you have to offer?

[Carolyn Van]

Truthfully, a lot of it has been word of mouth. We do active outreach to specific communities that we feel are significantly marginalized and underserved. That could be a lower income area, an area that has been deemed by census data to have a higher population of at-risk youth. We specifically reach out to organizations that represent those communities to encourage involvement. Thanks to our funding partners, we also have scholarships that we can offer these young people.

We're finding that specific outreach plays a critical role as well in ensuring the participation of the people in our programs.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Can you comment on some of the positive outcomes you're seeing? You have ladies who code and girls who code. You're taking them in from various age groups. For the girls, what are some of the positive outcomes that come from having been part of the program? Also, for the women, what are the outcomes you're noticing?

[Carolyn Van]

A lot of our youth are experiencing the road map of our programs. For example, we have a young woman named Chloe. She entered our road map through being a volunteer for the program girls learning code. Girls learning code is for 9- to 12-year-olds. She signed up to be a mentor and knew nothing about code at all. She just started mentoring and being there as a support system for this young girl. She then graduated to become part of teens learning code. She was actually part of the design process for creating what teens learning code is, which is for high school girls. She went from being a mentor and knowing nothing about code, moving to teens learning code, and continuing to be a mentor for young girls. She has now graduated to become part of the ladies learning code community as she is in her later years of high school. She has been applying to computer science at post-secondary institutions.

That is a story we hear time and time again from many girls within our program. They enter our pipeline having no understanding of code or computational thinking or any areas of STEM, and then they make specific decisions with regard to their professional careers to continue down that path.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thanks very much, Carolyn. That's wonderful.

We're going to switch to Eva for three minutes.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Van, for your presentation. Your work to encourage women to pursue STEM studies is very important.

Are the events and workshops regarding programming that you hold and the education programs regarding programming similar to other post-secondary learning environments or are they different?

[Carolyn Van]

They are different. Something we notice when really assessing how technology education is taught in your traditional classroom is that there is a lack of opportunity to take advantage of providing a bigger social and collaborative learning environment. When we think of computer science, we think of a classroom set up as rows of computers and a teacher at the front of the room. Our classrooms are designed differently. While that set-up is there, there's a lot of moving around within the classroom. We do a lot of unplugged, offline activities to teach computational thinking fundamentals. It's a lot more social and very creative.

One of the things we love about our programs is that they're project-based. It's not learning to code just for the sake of learning to code. It's more one of thinking about an issue that you see in the world. What do you want to tackle? What problem do you have with the world today? Then you start using technology as a tool to build awareness or to solve that problem.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Ms. Van, I would like to ask you a more specific question.

Are you referring to existing programs or have you developed your own programs?

[Carolyn Van]

These are programs we have designed with our team to implement through ladies learning code and our youth programs and teachers learning code.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Madam Chair, do I have any speaking time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have one minute.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Van, how can better technical knowledge help women succeed in other sectors of the economy, and not just in STEM fields?

[Carolyn Van]

This is an interesting question. When we work towards our teachers learning code program, the goal is to teach teachers how to introduce computational thinking to those beyond the usual suspects, those beyond the youth who would be naturally inclined to be interested in areas of STEM. For example, we teach teachers how to integrate computational thinking within history class, art class, music class, or gym class. In the end, computational thinking involves the sequential step-by-step scenarios of an action. That's something we're having a lot of fun with these days. We want teachers beyond science teachers and math teachers to be able to introduce these concepts to their classroom.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I'm feeling concerned about our witness. The last time she appeared before the committee, she had difficulty accessing the building, and also security.

I'm sure the committee team is on that, but I want to make sure we know that she's not stuck somewhere.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm going to let the clerk address this.

[The Clerk]

I received communication from the witness earlier today that there was trouble leaving Montreal, so that would be where the lateness comes in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Okay.

Sean.