FGA at Boeing sponsored Coding Summer School

Sarah Wilkin, founder & CEO of Fly Green Alliance has been invited by Boeing to present to students at Coding Summer School alongside Katie Cross of Pledgeball on Tuesday 6th July. Boeing has partnered with ThinkYoung for the last 11 years, where young people between the ages of 11 and 17 learn computer programming. This year’s theme on the environment and sustainability, a topic of crucial importance to Boeing, Fly Green Alliance and Pledgeball.

At the event ThinkYoung will explore digital platforms for the reduction of emissions which is a key remit of FGA and Pledgeball who will team up for this event. FGA are proud to support the next generation of #STEM leaders and are working to increase the number of women in STEM which Katie and Sarah as founders believe is important, not only will it give young women and those of diverse backgrounds the opportunity to expand their horizons and thinking, but hopefully provide examples and potentially encourage students to think about their next careers steps. Katie and Sarah will share how their careers have developed, why they set up their companies and hope to give examples to the class of female leadership, entrepreneurship and startup development.  

Katie and Sarah will present at the week-long event virtually along with a group from 11 different countries including: Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, France, Georgia, Slovenia, Poland, Germany and Netherlands. The class being up of 50% girls and 50% boys.

Katie has set up a Pledgeball event to accompany the presentation, encouraging students to consider, amongst other lifestyle choices, how they generally travel with emission reduction in mind which is in line with FGA’s work where we develop mobility solutions in order to reduce carbon. Both of Pledgeball’s and FGA’s work focuses on behavioural change which they also believe is key to climate strategy.

Sarah has commented, “At FGA one of our streams of work is DEI: diversity, equity and inclusion. There are still very low number of women in STEM and aviation, who at times represent only 20% of the workforce. We work to encourage more women in senior roles, flexible working contracts to support this and believe to make the workforce more balanced in the future it’s important to work with young adults. As someone who studied computing, was 1 of only 2 girls in the class, has campaigned for broadband and been part of the digital transformation, it felt important for FGA to change the perception of women in tech and to discuss the role of digital in climate solutions which the ThinkYoung and Boeing event also advocates for.”