The News Wheel
No Comments

GM Donates $255K to Black Girls Code for Detroit Chapter Launch

Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size Text Size Print This Page

Earlier this summer, GM announced Black Girls Code as one of the four new nonprofits it would partner with. The brand has made good on its alliance by donating $255,000 to this organization to help launch its Detroit area chapter.

To kickoff this initiative, the nonprofit has provided several workshops in the local community. The organization will start offering regular programming to serve girls in the region.

Black Girls Code aims to educate young black girls about coding. Per their website, their vision is “to provide African-American youth with the skills to occupy some of the 1.4 million computing job openings expected to be available in the U.S. by 2020, and to train 1 million girls by 2040.”

Black Girls Code

Black Girls Code workshop
Photo: Tested

GM’s motivation for backing this nonprofit is partly due to its value on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education. As Mary Barra, CEO at GM, articulates: “It’s our mission to help build the next generation of STEM leaders, with an emphasis on expanding opportunities to women and other underrepresented groups.”

GM also sees this partnership as a potential return, when these young leaders harness their newfound skills by joining GM’s electric and self-driving technology teams. Barra confesses the brand’s need for future associates that will help drive the new technology: “We’re on the forefront of electric and self-driving cars and connectivity that allows our vehicles to communicate with each other – and, with all that innovation, today’s cars have millions of lines of code.”

We look forward to the cultivation of the Detroit chapter of this notable organization.

News Source: Tech Crunch, The Grio, Black Girls Code