As the tech industry continues to recognize its gender and race gaps, foundations are committing funds to address these gaps, particularly for girls. A recent example: an announcement by the TE Connectivity Foundation that it will grant $1.25 million to three nonprofit organizations this year: Girl Up, FIRST Global, and SMASH. The foundation’s mission is to bring innovation to engineering and technology by providing opportunities for women and minorities to learn and take part in such innovation.
TE Connectivity is a tech company specializing in the creation of various products for the technology world. With 78,000 employees worldwide, TE Connectivity has 13.1 billion in sales in 2017, and has over 7,000 engineers on staff. The company website describes their work as creating “a world that’s smarter, safer, greener, and more connected.”
Girl Up was chosen for this grant because of the organization’s mission to develop female leadership in STEM fields across the globe. Being an organization of the United Nations Foundation, they have sites and connections worldwide. These sites host GIRLHERO Solution Labs and STEM boot camps. Together, these programs teach STEM skills to girls to both grow their interest in the field and increase STEM job availability for women.
Girl Up also has corporate partners and and foundation support from Disney, BNY Mellon, Caterpillar Foundation, Oath (an advertising subsidiary of Verizon), and Special K Cereal.
There is definitely more room for corporate partnerships like TE Connectivity’s partnership with Girl Up. Imagine if every corporation took an interest in supporting collaborative efforts to address the race and gender gaps in tech — we could make so much more progress. Learn more about Girl Up partnerships here.
The other two grantees for this year from TE Connectivity Foundation are First Global, organizers of a yearly international robotics challenge that reaches more than two billion youth with STEM education, and SMASH, which seeks to reach underrepresented youth of color with STEM education and “access to resources and social capital,” helping them to launch successful careers in the technology sector.
Learn more about the TE Connectivity Foundation.
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