From a local program to a global initiative
The program gained momentum with the help of many enthusiastic Google volunteers and educators. Inspired by the mission and the promise that MtG could make a difference, volunteers around the world started creating local programs in their home countries. To date, MtG — recognized with the ABIE Award — has impacted over 100,000 students in 17 countries worldwide: Belgium, Brazil, England, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana Ireland, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Spain, Tunisia, and the U.S.
MtG Poland, the first initiative outside of Israel in 2013, hosts on-site visits where female students meet and interact with female software engineers. MtG Brazil brings together young students from 26-states to a first-of-its-kind 4-day immersive program. In 2021, MtG Ghana took the concept of equitable participation continent-wide, providing students from across Africa with basic computer skills otherwise unavailable for them. The MtG Arab countries initiative, a virtual program for young female students in Egypt, Tunisia, and Jordan, focuses on minimizing gender bias about women’s capabilities to pursue careers in tech in these countries. In South Korea, MtG recently started to focus on marginalized communities, rural areas and homeschooled students.
Many early participants were inspired to pursue STEM studies and are now in high-tech jobs, including at Google. Batya Berzack visited the Tel Aviv Google offices in 2009. “Until then, I mostly heard that you can’t be both a mom and a computer science engineer,” she says. Eleven years later, Batya is a software engineer in Google Tel Aviv, a mother of two, and MtG volunteer. Another volunteer, MtG ambassador and Google software engineer Abigail Annkah, also got to study STEM at a young age and is now committed to giving young women the same opportunity she had.