HackHer is a club at Bellarmine founded by senior Arsema Robi who strives to facilitate a welcoming space for women interested in programming and technology. The club plans to hold their first meeting of the year next Monday, Nov. 3, in room S-111. HackHer meets every Monday morning and every Friday afternoon.
The idea for HackHer came after Robi noticed that while many girls joined our Robotics team at the start of the year, their participation often fell off over time. “A lot of girls were interested in programming, but many felt intimidated or unsure if they could fit in,” Robi explained.
HackHer was made to provide a space where girls could learn more about computer science through introductory lessons. As Robi elaborates, there was kind of an imbalance, people coming into robotics already having a lot of prior knowledge. And if you don’t have that prior knowledge, you fall behind.” HackHer offers beginner-friendly coding workshops and crash courses in languages like Python, C#, HTML, led by their leadership, to help overcome this “knowledge-gap” and learn to make projects that they can be proud of.
These lessons take time to make, and are all made by the leadership. Hours of effort are put in for the select members that participate, yet engagement has been difficult to find. The goal of the club is for people to be able to walk away with something new, and HackHer doesn’t just stop at teaching:
HackHer encourages members to explore real world opportunities. The club plans to hold game jams where students can show their creativity, participate in hackathons where students can earn money from their projects, and have joint events with our Computer Science club. “The skills you learn here are things you can take anywhere,” Robi says. By helping members build portfolios, HackHer opens the door to other opportunities both inside and outside of our community.
Guess what, juniors? The club also provides service opportunities, with goals to mentor students from local middle schools in the spring. Bringing awareness and spreading the passion to younger students of our community is how we strengthen both the future of our schools programs and your college applications.
