ConsCientistas

An initiative that incentivizes young girls to become scientists through a platform that provides exclusive opportunities and contact with our mentors.

Across the world women make up only 35% of STEM undergraduate students (United Nations). When it comes to Brazil, only 43% of the women study the field, and only 38% end up graduating.

The lack of incentives and references of female scientists directly impacts the choice of young girls when it comes to deciding their majors. Additionally, common sense is another factor that plays a large part in those numbers. From a young age, through their development, girls learn that boys are better than them at STEM fields, like mathematics and physics. This teaches them that becoming an engineer, for example, is intangible and beyond their reality. 

Unfortunately the cultural and social reinforcement that mathematics and sciences are a “boys field” generates obstacles that push girls away from those positions, worsening gender inequality. Because of this, ConsCientistas was made to spread the word that girls are capable and transform the Brazilian reality by helping young girls develop themselves.

ConsCientistas is a hybrid solution—working through both an online platform and in-person events. Our platform adds everything a girl needs to starting learning STEM in a single place. Some of the features are: calendar of free STEM national events and competitions, self-teaching materials, volunteering opportunities, scholarships and accessible courses. 

When it comes to in-person efforts, we hold workshops in schools and scientific fairs. In these activities, our mentors (young successful women who are students or have graduated in STEM fields) inspire children and teenagers by telling their stories and the basics of their specialty. 

In the near future, ConsCientistas will provide its own opportunities. Such essay competitions, where girls will write what inspires them to become scientists, scholarships for base-education research projects, professional mentorships, and hackathons (with special prizes for girls).

For children from 8-10 years old, we will run workshops with activities to help them develop their creativity and interest in STEAM areas. We have, as a technology-related solution, the creation of an online competition, in which the best drawings would be transformed into comic science stories (through digital art) and would be published in publishers and websites. In this way, both young writers and readers will feel motivated to imagine themselves as great scientists or astronauts in the future. As another technological proposal, we will use our experience with machine learning to offer courses on artificial intelligence applied to astronomy and other areas. Thus, we believe that we can encourage girls in computer science fields as well.

Our project aims to encourage girls in the areas of STEM from the end of early childhood to the last year of Brazilian basic education, that is, from 6 to 18 years old. We also aim to support girls who live in vulnerable communities, providing free support and resources, with the purpose of showing ways for them to feel able to become scientists or engineers and thus positively impact the entry of more women into STEM careers in our country.

Our team is composed of young girls, aged 15 to 21, who are pursuing STEM areas in Brazil. In our trajectory, we experienced the difficulties of the path. That is, lack of representation, support, financial resources and visibility. 

Multiple members have had the experience of feeling unable to learn mathematics and other scientific subjects. However, over time and with the completion of several courses, participation in scientific olympiads and competitions focused on these areas, we realized that self-confidence can be developed with a lot of study and persistence. And for that reason, we believe it is very important to publicize opportunities for other girls.

Our wish is that the history of the scientific world changes and that we can encourage more girls to be scientists and give visibility to women who are already following this path that can inspire many others.

Our Scientific Article - 1st National Congress of Women

We are female, future scientists, and we bring our experiences and trajectories to the target audience as a contribution. While researching and developing the solution, we actively participated in projects such as InSpace and Sem Parar. Due to these experiences, we acquired the knowledge of leading and engaging girls committed to social impact, especially in STEM. 

In this way, together, we have held more than 30 lectures around the country, in just one year, where we spoke directly with girls aged 6 to 22. Last year, we were invited to speak at the 1st National Congress of Women in STEAM, where our own research was carried out, in the form of a scientific article, on the importance of representative groups to inspire girls in the area. In these events, we always receive feedback from faculty and students saying we managed to make STEM seem simple and inviting. In addition to receiving requests to participate in the projects and opportunities disclosed, which demonstrates the positive result of the lectures. We were also part of the Força Meninas (Go Girls) acceleration program for 9 months, we were monitored for the development of our solution, mentored by specialist professionals and sponsored to pay for the materials and travel for our activities.

The girls from ConsCientistas have been working in the area of scientific dissemination and education for at least three years, individually. It was observed that Brazilian projects of science dissemination rarely reach students affected by the lack of opportunities, since the most benefited audience is the one that has already had opportunities, which mainly represent the private schools. Furthermore, most of them do not have exclusive programs aimed at encouraging girls to enter the STEM area. ConsCientistas provides an innovative solution because, in addition to having an accessible platform with exclusive opportunities for girls, it will have representatives from all states disseminating science and lecturing in public schools, an action that will make all the difference and reach new audiences, which are among the youngest.

Our impact goals for the next year are initially to achieve, through dissemination on social networks and in-person lectures, to awaken the interest of girls who like scientific careers, but still don't know how to find more information about them. In addition, we intend to seek partnerships with schools, institutions and NGOs to carry out our in-person lectures. Our goal is to impact more than 5,000 girls in the country throughout the year, making possible, in addition to these free opportunities, their first contact with science in childhood.

We use digital technology, as we believe it has the ability to ensure scalability and accessibility to our project. Our main solution is a responsive website with the aim of encouraging girls to learn more about careers in STEM, creating a community for sharing events, opportunities and knowledge on the subject. To create our website, it was necessary to use WordPress and a database.

We have already directly impacted 1200 girls in the northeast and southeast regions of Brazil. Among our main objectives for next year, we have to reach an audience through content on social networks, especially Instagram, through the main form of content, contact with girls and promotion. We set a target of around 1500 followers on Instagram by this year.

In-person, we aim to have at least 3 representatives in each state to speak 2-6 times a year at schools and events. In this way, the total number that we have already reached will increase exponentially. We believe that in this way, in 2 years, we will have organically reached around 15,000 girls

Currently, the barriers that are preventing us girls from achieving our goals for 2023 are:

• The financial issue for the investment of materials to develop materials for lectures, awards, having our own telescope and holding face-to-face or online events.

• Techniques, as we will need to build a strong support network to help us carry out online and face-to-face activities, but in the recent context we are going through with the pandemic, we are still at the beginning of our events and face-to-face activities.

Even with all the difficulties, we believe in the importance of our initiative and we are willing to deal with all the challenges that lie ahead.

We are currently in partnership with Força Meninas (Go Girls). A support organization in Brazil for girls. We are working with events, challenges, meetings and interactive lectures with the organization's community.

We offer, mainly for the girls who benefited from the project, in addition to a new and successful academic vision, the service provided by our lectures throughout Brazil (27 states and all impacted regions) which are classes and lectures, online or face-to-face and free. After that, another service of great relevance and that makes things a lot easier for them are the opportunities shared on our social networks almost daily, in this vein, our girls don't need to make an effort and spend a lot of time searching for something that suits them, we we do it ourselves and share it, one of the results of this wide dissemination is our participants winning scholarships and prizes.

ConsCientistas is a platform that currently works on a free and voluntary basis. The goal is to keep our services for girls affordable. In the future, with our programs if there is a need for funds to cover expenses, we will follow the model of girls with conditions, covering those who don't. Our biggest fundraising methods at the moment are grants and crowdfunding.