Written by volunteer writer Adithya Ganesh

TechGirlz volunteer, David Patrick, from Hartford County, Maryland gave a TEDx talk about his experiences in tech and how he views the TechGirlz organization’s role in tech. David loves to teach and volunteered with the organization in order to do his part to raise awareness and make some changes to the disproportionate amount of females in the STEM/technology industry and to discourage the fears that some of these young ladies have. He even got his team at DSA Inc. and daughter, Sarah Patrick, to get involved.

He stated about TechGirlz, “They want to inspire girls to explore the possibilities of technology and not to be discouraged by the environment that exists out there that kind of makes them fear getting into technology.”

In David’s TEDx talk, he covers a lot about what the heart of TechGirlz is and stands for. He talks about the way that the girls are taught, and all of the different interesting workshop topics to choose from.

“They provide these things called TechShopz in a Box. It’s curriculum, it’s slides, it’s workshop plans, it’s activities, and they help us to easily run these workshops to inspire these young women, young ladies to get into technology,” said David.

“There’s all sorts of cool ones you can do, You Can Code, Newsroom Story Production, Podcasting, Videocasting,” said David.

David talks about all of the fun times and activities they have done at the workshops. He said that once the girls knew that there was nothing to be afraid of, they used the technology as a tool to create their own creations and even want to copyright it.

While tossing TechGirlz tshirts into the crowd, David ends his talk by inviting others to get involved and help out young women in their own community, by volunteering at a TechGirlz workshop or leading one. Contribute in anyway you can and you will be making a change for the better.

See the TEDx talk video here.