This New Cartoon Wants to Inspire Girls to Become Engineers
Meet Ella. She wants to get girls coding. She’s happy to inspire any little ones to go digital, but she really, really wants to see more young girls end sentences that start: “When I grow up, I want to be…” with “engineer.” And we do too.
Ella the Engineer is the star of a TBD show that is currently crowdsourcing for moola to make a pilot episode on Indiegogo. She is the baby of a dad who already has his own two little Ellas — Anthony Onesto, the director of technology talent development for Razorfish/candidate for Dad of the Year. He came up with the idea for a program starring Ella after being bummed about the lack of tech-savvy female role models in the cartoons and kiddie shows that his two young daughters watched.
Our http heroine will also be brought to you by a group who knows a thing or two when it comes to women and web. Girl Develop It, an organization that works to provide all women affordable and accessible programs to learn software development joined forces with Anthony to help get Ella to prime TV time. In fact, if they don’t reach their goal, the dollars go to Girl Develop It to continue their efforts. (Sidenote: check out and support Girl Develop It now too while you’re at it!)
While we know Ella would approve of that, we hope she makes the necessary funding needed to hack a crack into a major glass ceiling at the playground level. A daily TV show on Disney or Nick could see the same success at inspiring bitty viewers to join Team STEM as efforts to bring easy-to-play coding games and apps to their digital devices do.
This is an Indiegogo campaign that we’ve had our eye on and right now there’s still a ways to go for them to reach their $25,000 goal. If you want to help give girls a coding role model, spread the word or head here to pledge your support. For a $25 donation, you’ll get a Tattly temp tattoo of Ella (gotta love a creative pledge gift!) and knowledge that you’re helping inspire and empower the co-ed coders of tomorrow.
Do you know a young girl who would love Ella? How do you think we can get kids more interested in STEM?
