A Week with Generation Girl

Generation Girl held a 6-weeks Summer Club to encourage young girls in Indonesia to make their mark in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. I was lucky to be one of them.

Hello! A short introduction here. My name is Sekar. Currently a student at Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology in Surabaya, majoring in Statistics. I have enjoyed my time with Week 6 Robotics in Generation Girl’s Summer Club 2019.

I found out about Generation Girl through Instagram and immediately got hooked. As someone who is from a technological institution, I understand how challenging it is to be a woman amongst men. There was still few female role models for me to look up to, so I thought Generation Girl is perfect for me. I feel like I share the same vision as Generation Girl’s.

When I found out about Generation Girl, they would be holding Summer Club for 6 weeks starting in June 2019. I was super excited for this. Unfortunately, the Summer Club is for young girls in high school only (for SMP/SMA in Indonesia). And their application for volunteers and mentors were already closed. So what did I do? I messaged them through Instagram and told them how I wish they can make it for college students.

To my surprise, they responded to me and said to look forward to it. How exciting! Generation Girl actually opened limited slots in Summer Club for college students for Week 6 Robotics. I applied immediately and had the best times of my life.

The Summer Club was held in WeWork at the newly open Menara Astra in Sudirman. I arrived at Menara Astra at 9 am and went straight to the lobby. Then, I was guided by the volunteers to the 36th floor where the introduction was held. Basically, in the introduction, there was explanation about what Generation Girl is, what we are going to learn through out the week, where we are going to have field trip, and stuff like that.

After the introduction, I got to know my classmates. I realized that we were from very diversed background. Our age ranges from 14 to almost-20 years old. Then, we were guided to our class on the 37th floor. We met our super awesome mentor, Jane Nawilis, who then taught us about robotics. We found out that she is currently doing finance, but she really has that passion for science and technology. You can clearly see the burning passion in her eyes!

At the end of our first day, we were able to assemble our robots and program our robots to do things we told them to. Those robots can go forwards or backward or turn left or turn right or even make a U-turn. It was super cool to be able to program those robots the way we wanted them to.

The next day, we were taught how to make our robots sing. Our robots have the ability to play different notes with different beats that we can adjust. So that our robots can play a song using those beats. Unfortunately, I have no sense of music so I kinda failed to make my robot sing (sorry). My classmates’ robots nailed their song though.

Also, our robots have that-LED-thing that can light up if we program them to. The LED can change its colors according to our wishes and lights up at a certain time. It is very pleasing to see our robots can light up simultaneously.

The day ended with learning basic self-defense with Kak Gita Sjahrir, Master Jeson, and Chief Budi from Spartan House. It was super fun! I never thought learning self-defense such as Krav Maga can be exciting, but they surely prove me wrong. We were taught how to defend ourselves if a stranger approaches us by using our hands, feet, and mind. They convinced us that we can change ourselves from being a victim to being a victor, if we put our mind to it. Another lesson from learning self-defense was to be self-confident. Because you got to be confident in yourself in order to defend yourself.

The day I was waiting for! A day out in Tokopedia! I had never been to a startup company’s office before, so it was very mind-opening for me. Their office was nothing like the usual conventional office.

Our day started with a presentation from Tokopedia’s representative. He explained everything about Tokopedia. According to him, Tokopedia is a technology company in Indonesia that creates opportunities and helps everyone achieve more. Tokopedia is now developing itself to be one of South-East Asia’s leading ‘Super App’. So that its users can find everything they’re looking for in Tokopedia.

Next, after the presentation, we had an office tour. We were guided by the interns in Tokopedia to look around their office. We were awed by their modern workplace. There was a fully equipped gym, a playground for their employees’ children, a room full of arcade games, huge auditorium, and an artificial garden with a view of Jakarta from above. And of course, we had to had lunch in their artificial garden.

We had a UI/UX workshop after lunch. A team of pretty young ladies from Tokopedia Design introduced us to what exactly UI/UX is and how to think like UI/UX designer. I gained many insights from Tokopedia Design team about UI/UX importance in our daily life. At the end of our workshop, we had to make our partner a bag design based on what her needs. Overall, it was a very fun and insightful workshop!

On our fourth day, I and my classmates had to 'master plan’ our final project together. We agreed to do choreography with our robots. It was seven robots in total. So we decided to make one of the robots sing a song, while the other robots dancing around. It was a little frustrating to make sure every robot move at a certain time or reach a certain position.

We had another memorable time when we had lunch with Kak Robyn Soetikno. In 2015, she founded PT Global Urban Essential (GUE), when she was just 22 years old! Her startup is targetting to build an ecosystem to enable better healthcare management. You might already hear of TemanBumil, TemanDiabetes, and GueSehat? Well, those platforms are parts of PT GUE.

Kak Robyn shared her experiences that led to her success. After high school, she went to New York and took Global Health and Theatre for her undergraduate studies. She also graduated with a Master Degree in International Health Management from Imperial College London. Then she went back to Indonesia to create her own startup in healthcare. A thing that I remember was that she told us that it is okay to reach out to other people and always look for the opportunity to help others. Kak Robyn is such an inspiring young woman. I would love to thank her for being a great role model for all of us!

It was our last day learning robotics in Week 6. My classmates and I had 2 hours to finish our final project before we do our presentation. We managed to program our robots by implementing our learnings throughout the week. All thanks to our mentor!

After lunch, we finally presented our final project in front of our friends and family. It was a success! One of our robots sang a traditional Indonesian (or Sundanese to be exact) song, Manuk Dadali, while the other robots were doing the choreography that we programmed the other day. There had been some minor mistakes though. But most importantly, we had a blast doing our final project together.

And unfortunately, it was also the very last day of the entire Summer Club 2019. We had a closing ceremony together with the other classes as well. It was hard to say goodbye to my lovely classmates, our super sweet volunteers, and our super awesome mentors. Nevertheless, I felt really grateful to get to know all of these amazing people in Generation Girl.

No doubt that this Summer Club had changed my perspective and broaden my mind. I gained a lot of knowledge in terms of science, technology, education, and even beauty. I had the chance to meet a lot of inspiring and empowering people. And I got to explore and experience a lot of new things.

Thank you to the Founding Sisters of Generation Girl!

Generation Girl is present to be able to empower women in this men-dominated world of STEM. There was a lacking of female role models for young girls in these fields. Luckily, now we have you. Well to be exact, we have each other through Generation Girl. Women support women. How wonderful that is!

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