CoderDojo Girls Initiative 10th October, 2017 How can we increase the number of girls at CoderDojo clubs? Earlier this year, with funding from the Scottish Government Digital Participation and support from Glasgow Science Centre, Natalie Price and I were able to analyse attendance data from four years of Dojos to see which of these interventions were most effective. The results can be viewed as a brief, interactive report or in its full text format. With funding from the Digital Xtra Fund, I was able to use these results as the basis of an online Gender Balance Toolkit .* This was intended to help Dojos and other coding clubs improve the gender balance of attendees by outlining a number of simple interventions that could be tried. Since its publication in March this year the Toolkit has been viewed just under 500 times. Viewers have been based across the UK and Ireland, and in countries around the world, including Australia, the USA, Finland and Jordan. This week the CoderDojo Foundation launched its own Toolkit as part of its Girls Initiative. The Toolkit includes case studies from mentors and ninjas from Dojos across the world, along with best practice suggestions and links to materials likely to appeal to both girls and boys. It also features several sections drawn from our two gender balance publications and a case study on our experience with one-off girls only Dojos. The Foundation is aiming to increase the percentage of girls attending Dojos to 40% over the next three years. We at CoderDojo Scotland hope to do the same. We’ve come a long way since the first Scottish Dojo in 2012 which featured a webpage with a dinosaur on wheels and the Batmobile zooming around in the IMAX downstairs, but only one girl attending as a young coder. Dr Claire Quigley CoderDojo Scotland