YWCA campers learn the power of coding

Girls at the YWCA's Power of Being a Girl summer camp are brushing up on theircomputer programming skills with help from Ladies Learning Code.

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Ladies Learning Code is an organization with a mission to empower women and youth with technological and computer programming skills. They hope to ensure women and youth have access to opportunities to learn these skills.

The organizationhas been travelling across the country this summer to reach more youth. They have a goal of covering 35,000 kilometres and teach over 10,000 kids to code.

YWCA's Power of Being a Girl summer camp invited Ladies Learning Code to come teach their camperscomputer programming skills.

"When we heard that these ladies were travelling across Canada, it was so important to us that we get them here," said Amber Bayda, social programs coordinator at the YWCA.

"It's just one more way that we can expand these girls' toolkit and give them knowledge in different areas that they might not be learning elsewhere."

Camp-goers

Latasia Deegan, 12, has been attending the Power of Being a Girl summer camp for four years in a row. She has a passion for writing, and hopes that being able to code will help her build a webpage to share her writing.

"I would also like to write an article about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women," said Deegan, who is a member of the Carry the Kettle First Nation.

Deegan likes to write fictional novels and short stories, and her last piece was a modern twist on the old Snow White tale.

"There's a lot of things that hold us back, and coding may just be a point where we can share our opinions on the internet and people can see us for girls and humans," said Deegan.

Jorden Blundell, 12, is also excited to learn how to program because "boys can do it, so girls can do it too."

The future

Bayda said that she is excited for these girls to start learning these skills, as our society moves further with technology. She hopes that these skills will help the girls with their future careers and education.

"I think just gender-wise, girls are kind of turned away from these areas," said Bayda. "Maybe this will open up some of their minds to maybe doing this in the future."