A 3D printing lab. A digital music master class. A class explaining how to build robots. The third annual Greenlight@Brussels Day brought 250 teenage girls from around Belgium for a day of workshops designed to encourage them to become engineers. We helped finance the event and a Google software engineer Emily Soldal came from Sweden to provide mentoring.



Too few women study science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Less than one fifth of engineers in the European Union are women, according to Engineering UK. This represents a giant waste of talent, particularly in this period of high youth unemployment. The EU estimates in its Forsight Report that there will be 700,000 unfilled tech jobs by 2015.

We support a number of educational initiatives to bring more women into computer science. Greenlight for Girls is an international non-profit organization. At its annual Brussels event, experts, volunteers and role models from all over Europe contributed to the day’s learnings. European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes contributed a video message, encouraging the young women “to remember they can be anything they want to be”.



Take a look and consider a career in computer science. Events like Greenlight@Brussels showcase how computer science can be combined with other fields - and provide students a competitive advantage in a tight job market.

Posted by Angela Steen, Senior Policy Analyst, Google