While many kids their age use the weekend to relax from school, two of our young women spend two hours every Saturday morning pursuing an educational interest. 

After hearing about the program Girls Who Code from Mercy Home’s Idalis Uriostegui, Alexa and Alise have attended each of the last two sessions and will continue to do so until April 2024. 

Girls Who Code is an international nonprofit organization that aims to support and grow the number of women in computer science. It was created to show young women that coding is a problem-solving tool that can be used to invent, lead, and explore.

“Girls who Code is mostly teaching based on engineering,’ Alexa said. “If you’d like to go into the career of engineering, they’re basically helping you. If you’ve done it before, they’ll put you in a level that isn’t too hard for you. It’s just a process to learn if you really like it or not.”

When Uriostegui brought the idea to Alexa and Alise, they were both eager to join. Alise is the more experienced coder of the two and Uriostegui thought it would be a good opportunity to network with other youth in the program as well as the experienced mentors that teach the class.

“I would say my favorite part is learning,” said Alise, who is thinking about applying to UIC for college. “We’re learning Java Script and Python. I’ve been playing around with Khan Academy and different websites, so I know how to use it a little bit, but at the same time, I probably need to jog my memory.”

Before joining Girls Who Code, Alise learned HTML and is also taking a class in school where she works with the programming language C++. In college, Alise wants to study video game development or character designing.

Alexa, who’s been at Mercy Home for about four years, joined Girls Who Code with little experience. Uriostegui thought that it would be a great way for her to interact with other people outside of Mercy Home. She always wanted to learn about coding when she was young, but never thought she’d get the opportunity. 

“I always had to let it go, because I thought I’d never get the chance,” Alexa said. “But now look at this… I find it interesting. Most of the things that I know are because I got curious and I learned about it.”

Alexa really appreciates her mentor in the program because they remind her of the coworkers at Mercy Home. Her message to other people is that it’s never too difficult to learn something that is unfamiliar at first. 

“People go into that mindset that I don’t want to do it because it’s too hard, but you will never know if it’s too hard unless you try it,” Alexa said. 

While both Alexa and Alise said that they enjoy having each other’s company in the virtual program, they both relish the opportunity to meet new kids just like them.

“I realized last Saturday that it’s not just people from America,” Alexa said. “There’s people from the other side of the world.”

Not only are the two enjoying the two-hour sessions every week, but they are making a difference by breaking into a field that that has historically employed more men. 

No matter what Alexa and Alise chose to do in the future, we know they’ll succeed—especially with the encouragement of caring adults who believe in them and support their education.