Teaching girls from Mashteuiatsh about technology
Our team was offered the opportunity to go and teach young indigenous girls from the community of Mashteuiatsh. Women are underrepresented in the video game industry, making it even more important for us. We were thrilled to go to Alma to teach these young girls skills related to technology that could make them discover something they love.
It was a weekend workshop organized by COlab numérique and Puakuteu Women’s Committee of Mashteuiatsh. Six women from our team set off in the biggest van available for a 6-hour road trip to Alma, blasting music and getting to know each other better. Hyped up by ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”, we had a great project for our participants: To create a mobile app mock-up that was a solution to a problem of their choice. They were divided into two teams:
The first team chose to make an app to help them with the process of cleaning and organizing their bedroom.
The second team chose to create an app that would make resources accessible to their community and available 24/7. The knowledge you can find on the app could be related to finance, health and culture. It was really touching to see them wanting to feel helpful towards the community and get creative about it at such a young age.
It all started with a Friday evening brainstorming session, where we didn't know what to expect. The girls turned out to be a bit more inexperienced than anticipated, so we had to adapt our presentation to make it as accessible as possible. Then came a day full of courses. They got to learn three software:
Photoshop to create a logo
Adobe XD to create an app template and buttons
DaVinci Resolve to create a video montage showing off their app
In the end, both teams came up with amazing final products. They all showed enthusiasm and were proud of what they achieved. We could see that it sparked interest in them and that was the ultimate goal. The girls and the organizations that planned this activity talked about taking the whole thing a step further and would like to see us collaborate again in the future.
