Black Girls CODE and Colgate-Palmolive Push Girls to Code a Brighter Future With Inaugural Hackathon

New York, New York, May 15, 2017 (Newswire.com) - As part of its continued mission to provide young girls of color with access to technology education, Black Girls CODE, in partnership with Colgate-Palmolive, a leading global consumer products company, hosted its first Code a Brighter Future hackathon. The event, which was hosted Friday, April 28 – Sunday, April 30, took place at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in Brooklyn, New York.

The three-day youth focused hackathon attracted over 70 girls from all over the New York metro area who spent 2.5 days building mobile applications focused on socially impactful issues such as feeding the homeless, finding and connecting with local mentors, and tracking lost pets as well as the closest waste areas to keep cities clean. More than 90 mentors and volunteers from various backgrounds and organizations including Google, Foursquare, Snapchat and Prolific Interactive were on hand to provide the girls with assistance and direction.

“Black Girls CODE is excited to launch the Code a Brighter Future hackathon series with the Colgate team,” said Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls CODE. “Our New York event was incredibly successful and shows the power of cross-sector partnerships to create opportunities for girls to build their leadership and technical skills as future innovators. We look forward to many more successful collaborations in the future."

Black Girls CODE awarded the first place prize for the hackathon to the team, Quadro, who developed “Doggo,” an application that uses beacon technology to track dogs. As part of their winnings, the team, which included participants Adrianne Royal, Ava Louis, Nina Jeffries-El and Tyler Sharpe, received a $4,000 educational scholarship.

“Coding has completely changed how I see myself,” said Tyler Sharpe. “When I won, I felt so much better about what I had to offer and realized I was so much more than the limitations I put on myself or that I’d let others put on me.”

As part of its Summer of CODE 2017, Black Girls CODE will host another hackathon later this summer in Oakland, California as well as hold other summer coding workshops. For more information about Black Girls CODE and its lineup of events empowering young girls of color, please visit their website at www.blackgirlscode.com.

About Black Girls CODE

Since 2011, Black Girls CODE has been committed to providing girls from underrepresented community’s access to technology and 21st-century skills necessary to become tech leaders. Black Girls CODE’s organizational vision is to increase the number of women of color in the digital space by empowering girls of color ages 7 to 17 to become innovators in STEM fields, and builders of their own futures through exposure to computer science and technology. 

About Colgate-Palmolive

Colgate-Palmolive is a leading global consumer products company, tightly focused on Oral Care, Personal Care, Home Care and Pet Nutrition. Colgate sells its products in over 200 countries and territories around the world under such internationally recognized brand names as Colgate, Palmolive, Speed Stick, Lady Speed Stick, Softsoap, Irish Spring, Protex, Sorriso, Kolynos, elmex, Tom's of Maine, Sanex, Ajax, Axion, Fabuloso, Soupline and Suavitel, as well as Hill's Science Diet, Hill's Prescription Diet and Hill's Ideal Balance. For more information about Colgate's global business, visit the Company's website at http://www.colgatepalmolive.com. 

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Source: Black Girls CODE