Working to Advance STEM Education for African Women Foundation and the Emerging Leaders in Technology and Engineering, ELiTE are partnering to promote African girls' interest and excitement in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) and Computer Science fields in 2014.

Wylie, TX -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/10/2014 --Working to Advance STEM Education for African women (WAAW) Foundation works to build the pipeline of African girls in STEM and CS, and engage this talent in innovation for the African continent. The Emerging Leaders in Technology and Engineering, ELiTE utilizes open source technology to increase access to STEM training across the globe through low-cost labs and experiments coupled with rigorous curricula. This partnership opportunity will provide computer science, mechatronics, and robotics programming for more than 5,000 girls in Sub-Saharan Africa with the support of the Google 2014 Root In Science and Engineering (RISE) Partnership awards. According to Google, "these awards aim to encourage collaboration across organizations in pursuit of a shared goal of increasing global participation in computer science".

WAAW Foundation was recognized and selected for the 2014 Google RISE Award based on its initiatives focusing and impacting African girls in STEM and computing education. Google stated that “Our RISE award recipients are change makers: they engage, educate, and excite students about STEM & computing through extracurricular outreach…With the technology industry predicted to grow at a faster rate than all other sectors, the need for this global effort has never been as apparent as it is now. We're excited to work with an amazing group of innovators and educators in 2014!’’.

The Google RISE award will enable WAAW foundation to expand the impact of one of its initiatives, the STEM College to secondary school outreach program by providing further training to the college students as well as set up the necessary resources for a more effective STEM cell office that will improve the functioning and expand the impact of the Cell. Funds will go towards items like Setting up a Content Resource Website (CRW), purchase of necessary teaching resources, purchase of re-useable STEM demonstration kits and development of initial teaching content . Funds will also be used to train fellows in the use, maintenance and extension of the CRW as well as skill that will make them successful as role models such as secondary school pedagogy and state standards for specific STEM areas.

WAAW Foundation STEM outreach program was launched in 2013 to bridge the secondary school-to-college continuum for Science Technology Engineering, Math (STEM) in Africa and ultimately increases the pipeline of African girls entering STEM careers. It is aimed at promoting sustainable, feed forward self-help initiatives that will target African girls in particular, and expose them to advanced curriculum, hands on experience and female role models in STEM and computing careers.

The goals of WAAW STEM outreach program are as follows:

- Train STEM graduate and University students to develop an avocation of contributing to K-12 STEM education by facilitating University student-led outreach programs aimed at STEM tutoring and mentoring for younger students (ages 11-15) in surrounding Secondary Schools.

- Integrate higher education research and innovation into secondary school learning by fostering interactions between secondary school students, and college/graduate students and academic professionals that will influence secondary school career selection toward STEM. Our program will expose STEM graduate students and faculty to secondary school students and vice versa, thereby resulting in improved interest for University students, and advanced understanding of STEM fields for Secondary students.

- Help secondary schools to reduce the consequences of insufficient qualifications of STEM teachers by injecting Graduate students with STEM and CS hands on and research knowledge into Secondary classrooms, and advancing discovery through STEM integrative, inquiry-based curricula and interaction with STEM Cell Fellows.

- Provide secondary school students with first hand STEM career knowledge and opportunity at the secondary school level, through the development of sustained partnerships with graduate students at universities and higher education institutions.

- Providing an opportunity for University students to provide sustained engagement, monitoring and impact to Secondary schools students and a reliable avenue to directly identify secondary school girls with keen interest and aptitude toward STEM as potential candidates to engage in the WAAW annual summer STEM camp.

- Develop a transportable and scalable model for the institutionalization of a sustainable secondary school partnership with higher education STEM departments, and illustrate the value of secondary school involvement for training STEM graduate students in communication, organization, productions, evaluation and molding the complete STEM individual.

About WAAW Foundation
WAAW Foundation is a 501(c) Non Profit organization whose mission is to increase the pipeline of African women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) related disciplines, and work to ensure that this talent is engaged in African innovation.

Our Vision:

- To train and engage women leaders who contribute to technology and economic growth in Africa.
- To become the premier international partner of choice within a global movement dedicated to ending poverty in Africa through female education.
- To be globally recognized for our unshakable commitment to the empowerment of African women.
- To contribute towards poverty eradication in African through Science and Technology research and innovation

Our Strategy:

To Empower African Women With A Strong Voice

Exposing, motivating and mentoring them in their pursuit of rewarding careers in science, engineering and technology related fields by: Educating and providing opportunities for education and promoting sustainable technology research and innovation activities for African Women.

Build STEM Communities that strengthen impact for African women by:

- Promoting avenues that will bring African women leaders and organizations from private industry, academia and governments to share ideas, collaborate, mentor and build and retain technology capacity in Africa.

- Building vibrant communities that engage girls with role models and mentors to ensure an ever increasing pipeline .