Zynga has pledged $100,000 from its Social Impact Fund to support Girls Who Code on International Women’s Day 2021.
The Women at Zynga group pledge will enable Girls Who Code to support girls at all points throughout their educational journey from third grade into the workforce.
Girls Who Code is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology. The organization has reached more than 300,000 girls in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, and India. About 50% of girls served are Black, Latinx, or from low-income backgrounds.
Through its free clubs program, Girls Who Code reaches young women at the most critical point in the pipeline, equipping them to use computer science to impact their community and providing a sisterhood of supportive peers and mentors to help them persist and succeed.
Phuong Phillips, the chief legal officer at Zynga, said in a statement that Zynga and Girls Who Code will use virtual workshops, school clubs, mentorship programs, networking, and more, to build the next generation of women in Science Technology Engineering Art and Math (STEAM) to help them to prepare for joining the tech workforce. She said that women at Zynga believe it’s important to take positive steps to strengthen the future of the industry for years to come.
Girls Who Code now has more than 80,000 college-aged alumni, who are majoring in computer science and related fields at 15 times the U.S. average. At its current pace, the organization is on track to close the gender gap in new entry-level computer science and related jobs by 2030.
With the new support, Girls Who Code will continue to expand its free clubs and alumni programming. This March, Zynga’s social channels will spotlight women who help to promote a more inclusive workplace for Zynga’s studios around the world. Small Giant Games, a subsidiary of Zynga, will be calling on its global network of players in Empires & Puzzles to help raise awareness by changing their alliance description to include the hashtag #ChooseToChallenge — the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day.