Google will announce a donation on Saturday of $190,000 to the Black Girls Code Initiative, which seeks to diversify the white, male-dominated technology industry, The New York Daily News reported.
The bilingual session on Saturday at Google's Chelsea headquarters will teach 75 black and Latina 12 to 17-year-old girls how to build a mobile app in one day.
"Our goal is to change the face of technology by showing the world that girls of color can code and do so much more," Kimberly Bryant told the Daily News. Bryant is the founder of Black Girls Code Initiative, which has seven chapters across the country and one in Johannesberg, South Africa.
The six-hour session will use a simple development kit that allows the beginner coders to create apps using programming "blocks" that are like puzzle pieces. Each block represents different commands and functions that animate a program when they're combined.
The New York City offshoot of Black Girls Code is the fastest-growing of the bunch, and the Google grant will allow the tech group to hire its first full-time workers in the city.
William Floyd, head of external affairs for Google in New York, said the search giant was interested in fostering a more diverse group of potential employees.
"For New York to grow as a tech center, we need to deepen and diversify the talent pool and build a pipeline for diverse groups to become involved in the industry," Floyd told the Daily News.
Statistics have shown that a large percentage of female students in middle school show an interest in math and science, but that by the time those same students reach college, only 3% still want to pursue those fields. The donation aligns with the city's investment in STEM - science, technology, engineering and math - in public schools.
New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña and Mayor de Blasio have spoken about the importance of having students ready for STEM-related fields like health care and computer programming. Those fields are growing at twice the rate as other sectors, according to U.S. Department of Commerce statistics.
