App Camp for Girls raises $100K with two days left

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Making tech careers for girls attainable.
Making tech careers for girls attainable.
Photo: App Camp for Girls

Head to any technology conference and you’ll wonder where all the women are. We live in an age where women are routinely underrepresented at best, harassed and threatened at worst.

Technology classes in schools are just as bad, with less opportunity for girls to explore potential careers in high-tech fields.

To combat this, a group of women in Portland started App Camp for Girls in 2013, and they’ve now expanded to camps in Seattle and Vancouver.

“Apps are rapidly becoming an important part the world’s economy and culture,” writes the team on their website. “If women are left on the sidelines of this phenomenon, everyone suffers.”

They’ve also just raised their goal of $100,000 with two days left in their IndieGoGo campaign.

The camp itself is a one week full time day camp program for girls in middle school. They get the full experience of making an app: brainstorming, design, coding, and marketing, all in a collaborative environment using professional tools like Xcode and Macbook Pros.

The girls have even released their own app on the App Store. The Quiz Compendium is a collection of all the apps the girls have made at camp. It’s even reached the number one spot in Paid Apps in the Entertainment section.

App Camp for Girls is looking to expand, and has taken to IndieGoGo, a fundraising platform similar to Kickstarter, to find the funding.

They would like to:

  • Recruit and train new volunteer organizers to launch new locations.
  • Build out App Camp Kit, a collection of equipment, curriculum tools, and camp procedures that is essential to successfully launching a new App Camp location.
  • Establish our first paid staff positions for administration, operations, and curriculum development, along with a fundraising plan that will support our ambitious plans for expansion and outreach.

If you want to support their work, head on over to their IndieGoGo page and drop them a little cash; maybe the next big app for your iPhone will get made as a result.

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