Westerville Central participants
Last weekend, five Westerville Central High School students participated in the first Girls of Color Hack Columbus TechCorps Hackathon. Sponsored by AT&T Ohio, the event took place at Franklin University on Friday, December 8 and all day Saturday, December 9. Girls from a number of Columbus area high schools learned to code using the MIT App Inventor. Each team developed an app whose aim was to empower young adult women in some way. They were all placed on different teams.
Central 9th grader Alondra Sandoval was on the winning team, and she received $250. Senior Safia Hersi was on the second place team, and she earned $50. Zianatu Fontie was on the team that placed third, and she earned $50 as well.
All of the girls who attended learned much about coding and each of them stepped far outside their comfort zones to participate in this workshop. Teacher Amy Farris explained, “Only one of these students even knew what coding was when I asked them to consider taking the risk to sign up for the event, which encourages girls of color to consider technology careers.”