International initiative aims to make science fun for young girls

By Elis Kiss

When was the last time you made a necklace from your own DNA as part of having fun with your girlfriends from school? While science and fun don?t always go hand in hand, especially in the girls department, two groups of 11-year-olds recently carried out the exciting experiment, one of three organized to launch an educational collaboration between global initiative Greenlight for Girls (g4g) and the Herakleidon Museum (herakleidon-art.gr) in Athens.

?You can do anything you want,? said Melissa Rancourt, Greenlight for Girls (greenlightforgirls.org) founder, speaking to her eager audience during the Herakleidon launch. ?When choosing your future you?re not choosing only one path.?

Rancourt was speaking from personal experience: Born in Italy to a family with Greek and French roots, she grew up in the United States and has been living in Belgium for the last few years. An engineer running her own consultancy company in Brussels, she is also the owner of a spa in the same city.   

Thanks to Rancourt and the Greenlight for Girls organization, girls from New York to Kinshasa and Bangalore, among many other places, are taking a fresh approach to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, also known as the STEM fields.

Established about four years ago, the international nonprofit organization has so far carried out about 70 events on five continents, reaching 10,000 girls with the help of over 1,300 volunteers. The core idea is to encourage more girls, aged 11 to 15, to follow a STEM direction through interactive, hands-on science events. Boys are not excluded from all the science fun with special days organized for everyone in classrooms.  

At the Herakleidon Museum, a cultural institution established in 2004...