Go Girls: Rising up Together

Brazil has 20 million girls 6 - 18 years old. It is expected only 63% will finish at High School. OCDE report (2018) has shown Brazilian boys outperformed girls in mathematics by 9 score points. Only 1% of the girls at age 15 performance different results. At our research,we call them High Achievers. Unfortunately, the OCDE report found no girls in Brazil expect to work in ICT professions. We worked with 43 thousand girls and have identified the main problems for them:  

Lack of close models  

Low confidence in STEM 

Gender Stereotypes Bias.

Absence of hands-on experiences contextualized with their interests.

Our solution is a Social Learning Platform for high achievers girls to develop as changemakers, thrive as mentors and to find opportunities. Connecting experiences as a community with teen girls who will feel supported to find their spark, awakening to STEM fields through challenges and encouraged in their journey.

Brazil has 20 million girls 6 - 18 years old. It is expected only 63% will finish at High School. OCDE report (2018) has shown Brazilian boys outperformed girls in mathematics by 9 score points. Only 1% of the girls at age 15 performance different results. At our research,we call them High Achievers.

High Achievers are girls from 15 to 22 years old who have outstanding results in Academic Olympiads, National Tests or highlight by non-academic results as activists, entrepreneurs, creatives or inventors.

Unfortunately, the OCDE report found no girls in Brazil expect to work in ICT professions. 

The last four years, We worked and research in our programs with 43 thousand girls and have identified the main problems for them:  

Lack of close models  

Low confidence in STEM 

Gender Stereotypes Bias.

Absence of hands-on experiences contextualized with their interests.

Around 36 high achievers girls participated in our offline programs, and we evaluate their positive influence in younger girls in our community. 

Our offline programs have limited capacity and did not allow girls to build long term relationships. Our solution connects girls from different ages, backgrounds and experiences through Technology.

Social Learning platform that connects high achievers young women as role models for support teen girls learning journey.

Rising together through Technology. Our product has four major components:

1)Self- Assessment 

AI assistant will make a questions and helping girls make their profile. The idea is conducting them to take active steps and make choices that shape their identity and help them discover their sparks (passions, interests, and dreams), suggest mentors, learn modules and challenges.

2)Educational
High Achiever Girls will be training through in-product nudges and videos modules that will help them develop SEL skills and thrive as mentors. Teens will learn through snack content modules. The objective is improving SEL skills, find their spark and learning more about STEM fields in an enjoyable way. 

3)Connecting Mentor/Mentee  
The AI assistant will suggest a list of profiles of mentors and mentees based on a user's self-assessment, localization and preferences. After a match, The Mentee or the mentor will start their program.

4)Challenges

Online hackathons with the objective of engaging mentors, mentees and affinity groups to work together on finding solutions to real-world problems contextualized with their interests and local communities. Teens will receive badges and mentors will achieve perks, opportunities and grants. 

The last 4 years, We have worked with our target. We have learnt about their habits, challenges, struggles and what are stepping their out of fullfill their potencial. Our Theory of Change is the example of how we expect to delevop a solution who will provide sense of belonging in their learning journey.

Our solution is related with two challenge dimensions:

- Strengthen competencies, particularly in STEM and digital literacy, for girls and young women to effectively transition from education to employment

- Increase the number of girls and young women participating in formal and informal learning and training.

Our social learning plataform will be a tool for girls Strengthen competencies, particularly in STEM and digital literacy and is too a way for increase number of girls and young women participating in formal and informal learning and training.

Our mobile-first solution aims to make the learning journey curious, social, joyfully and changemaker.

We have follow around the world lots of initiaves and programs who want to bring more girls into STEM.  Most of them are offline events or mentoring programs with more mature female role models.

We have tested all this formats and in the pos-covid era the digital solution is enabling for every social impact iniative who aims to impact in a more effective way your audience.

Our  solution is human centered and girls are at the centre of the interaction and the tool. We aims to make the learning journey a self discovering, curious, social, joyfully and changemaker.  We want girls to feel recognized and supported by a strong bond with other girls like her.

Our solution is a integration and adaptation of two existing technologies:

- Learning Social Plataform (example)Prototype  https://spark.adobe.com/page/e8ehhYl3Z6LtF/

-  Conversational Chat Bot will help girls discover their preferences to complete their profile, develop growth mindset and will fit interests and skills between mentors and studentes.

Our solution prototype: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

- Conversational Bot ( example): Modly https://www.mondly.com/ 

- Learning Social Plataform (example)

  https://spark.adobe.com/page/e8ehhYl3Z6LtF/

Prototype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

We have already achieved 43000 girls on offline events and more than 14200 are connectd with us through social media profiles from them or from their parents.

We expect to pilot a solution for 1000 teen girls and 100 high achievers at the launching. Our first wave will be Girls who had been part of our offline events and are on our social media channels.

In One Year, we expect to grow ten times the teens who will be supported by 1000 high achievers selected and trained as role models.

Our goal in 5 years is scale the solution for almost 10% of our target in Americas. We estimated our solution can achieve more than 5 million girls.

After scaled in Brazil, we will translate the plataform for Spanish and select high achievers girls in the next markets we will go. We expect to achieve The Americas in five years. First wave: Brazil, Second( 2 - 3 years): Latin America and North America in the last year.

Our goal in 5 years is scale the solution for almost 10% of our target in Americas. We estimated our solution can achieve more than 5 million girls.

The biggest barrier will be financial. Find a revenue model that promote self sufficient revenue to scale globally.

Força Meninas ( Go Girls) has a strong reputation in Brazil, and is successfully fundraising, generating earned income, and evaluating our work in the spirit of continuous quality improvement. With a strong board of directors, a growing team and tremendous momentum, we expect increase our fundraising prospects  for continued expansion. A sustainability goal is to build out more earned income strategies through corporate engagement programs. 

We have partenered with big companies such as: Uber and Facebook. We truly believe that companies commited with SDG will see in us a excellent solution to invest and address long term impact.

Our solution is a digital platform to Força Meninas a social impact business that carry out transformative experiences that awaken in girls the importance of expressing their full potential. Our programs develop skills that enable them to make their choices and face current and future challenges in building a more equal society.Launched in 2016, the initiative has already reached more than 43 thousand girls in eleven states, eighteen cities in Brazil. On 2018, Força Meninas was elected by Facebook: 1 of 105 impact community who are changing the world. The award provided a grant and learning development for our team.

Full-time Staff - 4

Creative and Content Officer

Chief Operations Officer

Product Owner

Community Manager 

Part-time Staff - 2

High Achivers Selection Analist

Trainning Coordinator

Contractors - 3 

Developers 

UX and AI Designers

Creative and Content Officer - Deborah De Mari is Força Meninas founder. Research about Gender, 21 Century Skills and Technology. She worked at big companies as Walmart.com and Natura for twelve years as Digital and Communications Manager.

Chief Operations Officer - Ana Carolina Garini, Microsoft alumni with experience in the tech industry and a strong presence in B2B models.

Product Owner -  Silvia Coelho, has a master in Electrical Engineering, to act in research and development of software for cell phones.

Community Manager - Bruna Lopes, one of the high-performance girls who received an award from Brazil Parlament for developing a program to eradicate functional illiteracy.

The Paula Souza Centre from São Paulo State Goverment - Public educational Institution, has around 200 thousand high school students, 46% of them are girls from our target.

Olympiads Girls -  Collective that recognize girls who run academic olympiads.

Girls on Science - Collective that organize science fairs around Brazil launched by two young female scientists.

Our current business model is fundraising performance comprised large and irregular grants, creating significant funding, uncertainty and risk. 

We needed to adjust revenue streams and reduce dependency in order to ensure continuity and remain on track to reach our ambition to scale up operations.

We expect to change from fundraising and donors for The Employment Model.

My purpose to change the world through girls empowerment is genuine. Solve Opportunity is an outstanding way to turn my biggest dreams into actions.

After being envolved with this purpose for four years, I'm conviced that my solution is innovative and bring the right tools to make the diference.

Business model is the biggest challeng for social business. I seek for help to turn my solution into a sutainable model that can develop a amazing team, an outstanding solution and the highest results.

I would like to work with United Nations, Unicef and any instution who are really commited to make the world more equal for girls and women. 

My solution designed I life learning tool who can be a gamechanging for girls, young women and companies who are seekingto find the right talents and contribute more a diverse and equal society.

Our solution are about how to get more girls into STEM in an enjoyable way. We believe cars are part of the human  evolution and receiving mentoring from GM can be a amazing opportunity to break gender stereotypes and bring more girls into engineers. For us, It will be a amazing opportunity to think together in a challenge to call girls to think about the Future of Automobilistic sector through Technology.

Go Girls will be a portuguese native tool, perfect for a pilot on Portugal. We believe a creativity one of the most important skills girls need to develop along their journey. Our Girl Academy can be a special place to engage girls and young adults in greater digital literacy .

Our solution will directly apply AI for implementing and training a chatbot to interact with users in our platform. We will also invest heavily on collecting and analyzing data to measure the impact of the app in our users. These data will also be analyzed to guide us on scaling the solution to other countries in Latin America and in the world.
From a broader perspective, our solution has the ending goal of encouraging more girls to be interested in STEM, as well as connecting them to training opportunities in the field. These girls will become women in the future who might potentially contribute to the development of new technologies in the fields of data science, AI, and machine learning. Therefore, our solution has a social and economic impact in the long-term.

Helping girls to get into Stem Fields and having inspirational role model that will support them follow their studies can be a life changing and qualify Go Girls to participate in this prize too.