Girls' Day 2023 was a great success. This event, which took place at the end of March, is organised by more and more companies to enthuse girls aged 10 -15 about engineering and science.
The participants consisted of both daughters of employees and girls from schools in Leeuwarden, Sneek and Drachten and it was once again a great success. This time, the participating companies Philips, Resato, Photonis, SRON, ASTRON and BD committed themselves to give the girls an interesting day. At SRON, they attended a number of presentations, including one on space research, and they had the opportunity to do their own experiments. They also had hands-on experience of soldering and investigating the spectrum of light.
Maths teacher Rozemarijn Wierenga accompanied the students, who were very enthusiastic. "If you are following the profile Nature and Technology or Nature and Health, you may sign up for this," said the girls. And it was clear that they were very much looking forward to it. They loved experiencing physics in practice. By the end of the day, they had sparked their interest for the open day at SRON in Groningen on 1 October. Perhaps they will become the future instrument developers, researchers, engineers and professors at Kapteyn Institute or SRON!
Hosts from Resato Hydrogen Technology, Photonis and Drenthe College teamed up to get about 120 girls excited about working in engineering. With fun workshops and a guided tour at Resato Hydrogen Technology, they got to see what the company does. They learned about applying hydrogen technology to enable a sustainable future, and at Photonis it was mainly about technology and innovation. Photonis' goal is to use new technologies to make the world a safer place. For example, they were shown how special equipment is used to make images of things you cannot see with the naked eye. For example, thermal images and light images. Perhaps they were inspired by these techniques to later work on new inventions and solutions to problems that affect us all.
At Philips, they were also actively engaged. In the morning, the group consisted of about 80 girls and after lunch, a new group of 100 girls attended. Among the participants were daughters of employees as well as girls from schools in Leeuwarden, Sneek and Drachten. They took part in four interesting workshops on technical chemistry and injection moulding, among other subjects. For example, they got to make a bouncy ball using their own mixed substance, or a phone holder. They were also encouraged to brainstorm on developing an ideal product model for the ‘ladyshave’ and had a fun challenge in which they had to open a safe by solving puzzles and issues in the 'Escape the factory' room.
At ICD, we are proud to see that more and more companies are getting involved in making girls aware that engineering is a fantastic field for them. At SRON, the girls experienced that physics is much more fun in practice than from a textbook and that is exactly what Girls' Day is all about. It is important that engineering is accessible to everyone, regardless of gender, age or background. After all, with more diversity in a team, better results are achieved. We will continue our efforts to make the world of engineering interesting and accessible for everyone, so we warmly welcome initiatives like these!
