Celebrating 20,000 More Girls in Tech

In 2017, we joined forces with Code First Girls (CFG) on their 2020 Campaign, which sought to teach 20,000 women in the UK and Ireland how to code by the end of 2020. With what back then seemed like a mammoth task, this International Day of the Girl we’re celebrating CFG smashing this target, with time to spare. 

Over the past three years, CFG has become the largest provider of free coding courses for women, having delivered over £14 million worth of free technology education. The community is also a diverse one, with over 50% of the women taught coming from BAME backgrounds. Throughout this journey, our Engineering division has partnered closely with CFG through sponsorship, volunteer teaching, hosting courses at our London office (and now virtually), as well as a series of events.

Most recently, we hosted the CFG virtual hackathon Hack From Home, which saw more than 50 women join together to use their programming skills to create ‘tech for good’ products to help the lives of those impacted by COVID-19. Post hackathon we worked with GS Accelerate to run bespoke workshops with the five winning teams, providing coaching on how to pitch their products effectively and developing business plans.

Jo Hannaford, head of EMEA Engineering, said: “We’re delighted to celebrate this milestone with our partners at CFG. It has been a privilege to support their 2020 campaign over the past three years — Goldman Sachs remains committed to achieving gender parity in STEM, as well as making coding more accessible to women.”