Girls have the power to make the world a better place, and these high school girls are already doing it. This group of all-girl engineers made a solar-powered tent for poor people so they could sleep warmly at night.Cities around the world are getting more expensive to live in, which is making more people lose their homes. In 2017, a group of high school girls decided they wanted to do something to help.
Unfortunately, because they didn’t have much to give, many of them felt helpless.The girls didn’t let the fact that they didn’t have enough money stop them. Where they couldn’t make money, they might be able to give these people in their community one of the most basic needs: a nice place to sleep at night.The group of 12 high school girls from San Fernando High School worked with DIY Girls.
DIY Girls is a group that helps girls get involved in STEM fields like science, technology, engineering, and math. They worked on their solar-powered tent for a whole year.The girls made a list of things that their tent had to have. The girls want their tent to help as many people as possible, like San Fernando’s homeless people and foreigners who have been forced to leave their homes.
Evelyn Gomez, who used to be the executive and program director and is now on the board of DIY Girls, was excited to help when she heard about the girls’ project. She went on to study engineering at MIT and UCLA after she graduated from San Fernando. Gomez knows from personal experience how important it is to help Hispanic and female students in this field.
Gomez says, “I know that when I was in college and graduate school, I was often the only Hispanic person in the room.” “I think it puts a lot of pressure on you. I’m not just speaking for myself; I’m also speaking for my people and my community. If I say something that maybe doesn’t make sense, that’s going to make them look bad.
The good thing about being an all-girl team and working in our own neighborhood is that we have no one else to ask for help. We have to come up with our own answers. It gives you a lot of power.” When the project started, the girls didn’t know each other very well. Today, they are all good friends who will continue to help each other as they go on to college.
At first, they relied a lot on Gomez, but they quickly got the confidence and ability to do things on their own. They used Google and YouTube to find out what they didn’t know.Even during winter and spring breaks, the girls worked on the project six days a week. They put their tent through a lot of strength tests and quality checks to make sure it was strong.
Their first version didn’t work, so they had to start from scratch. They hope that one day, their solar-powered tent will be made in large numbers so that as many people as possible can benefit from it.This all-girls team shows that girls and women can do anything they want to if they have the right support and guidance.