Who runs the world? Girls!

Saturday 27 February saw the start of a 3 week Data Module crash course, nicknamed #DataCodeStorm hosted by Code4SA and Codebridge, this time however the room wasn’t filled with the usual suspects, but rather 12 girls under the age of 18 from Code for Cape Town (Code4CT).

Code4CT is an organisation that runs 18 month programmes to introduce high school girls to coding, design and the tech industry. They are awesome! Through their work they aim to equip more young women to enter the labour force with tech and problem solving skills by providing an enabling environment.

Their mission is clear: encouraging girls to use technology to create solutions to social problems. How better to do this than with a bit of open data knowledge? This open data module was created to allow participants to delve into the world of data by fostering an understanding of what it is, how to use it and most importantly: how to tell a story with it in a visual way.

To this end, Jason took them through the importance of information and data, what open data is and why our rights around these are enshrined in chapter 2 of the constitution. They were also told about the data pipeline and how information needs to be taken through its paces. He then gave them a crash course in excel by creating a data set and then interrogating that data set with the help of all of the young ladies.

Wasting no time, Jason presented them with four datasets (some through an interface, others through spreadsheets):

• Wazi Map
• Find a school
• School masters list
• Matric results by school

In groups of three, the girls were asked to choose one of the following roles: the data nerd, the storyteller, the visualiser. Each group was then challenged to use the datasets to find interesting facts, to use these to find a story and then compile that story using visual representation(s) from the information gleaned.

On meeting these girls first thing in the morning we knew immediately that they were a bright bunch, we just had no idea how bright until they got going. By lunchtime we all completely were gobsmacked. At one point the videographer stopped what she was doing, looked over at me and said: “These girls are already smarter than I will ever be, and I am totally okay with that”. This about summed up my feelings of awe about them too.

Watch out world - these girls are going to making their voices heard in South African tech, and I couldn’t think of a more exciting prospect!