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OpenHub Leadership Principles for NGCC

The Problem:

In many areas of life, girls learn to mold themselves to fit into the expectations of others. They can earn high grades and accolades by performing well for others’ requirements. And this skill of meeting others’ expectations is important. But it won’t open doors of leadership.

Leadership requires the clarity and confidence of owning the truth one feels inside and conveying that truth effectively to others. A fundamental prerequisite for this is coming to see and feeling the voice of honest truth inside oneself. A person needs space to experience self without the burden of others’ requirements, in order to discover this inner voice.

Our Unique Approach:

OpenHub is committed to cultivating leadership in our Girls Who Code club members by creating a safe space for girls to discover and find confidence in their own voice. 

Our approach to cultivating leadership is something we call SHIP… The atmosphere or container within which young leaders can begin their voyage of growing in discovery and confidence.

The guiding principles of our SHIP approach are to always encourage:

• Sharing process over perfection
• Healthy freedom of expression
• Interaction and friendship among club members
• Playfulness and experimentation in project exploration

Our Mentors:

The role of OpenHub mentors within our SHIP approach, is to find ways to draw our club members out of their shell, to find what they love and have fun with and are passionate about. And then to channel members’ passionate energies toward productivity with tech. We’ve found this is the best way to ignite members’ sense of possibility and self-confidence.

Mentors help girls to envision goals that they feel good about and genuinely want to achieve, and then support girls in achieving these goals by:

• Providing some structure to encourage productive focus
• Guide productive collaboration between member girls
• Introduce new components of coding and technology to expand girls’ awareness of what’s possible and deepen their skills to build what they envision

One surprising metric of success we hold is ownership over obedience. Because ownership is fundamental to leadership, and it comes as girls are finding their voice and starting to shine. And that is a key to thriving. 

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Case History:#1:

Take the following example from our 2021 season graduation:

At the time of graduation, several club members had made good progress on their projects but had not finished. We encouraged them all to present their projects anyway and to describe all they learned and what their vision was and what they planned to do to finish the project. Process over perfection.

One member asked a mentor at the beginning of graduation: “Do I HAVE to present?”
To which the mentor replied, “We would really like you to present. There is so much beauty and value in your project, and we would really like you to share it even though it’s not done yet. Many members are showing their projects as works-in-progress.”

To the mentor’s disappointed surprise, when it came time to present, that club member was no longer at the graduation ceremony. She had decided to remove herself from that situation.

But just a few hours after graduation, our OpenHub mentors got an email from that club member. She had decided she did not want to settle for an incomplete project. Instead of staying at the graduation ceremony, she went home and finished her project. She apologized for possibly showing disrespect and offered that if a mentor would be willing to look over her project now that it was done, she would appreciate the feedback.

Of course we looked over her project and gave her feedback. And we celebrated her initiative of deciding what she wanted, and putting forth the effort and discipline it required, and then restoring disappointed relationships with honesty and integrity.

This member decided to continue with the program, and is demonstrating beautiful initiative in designing her new projects and incorporating into her projects the new tech we’re exploring as we go. She has shared that she enjoys how tech gives her a way to share her voice. We’re very excited to see her shining light blossoming.

She was fully engaged and empowered by the problem solving andCAN DO experience and attitude. So she enrolled to the next cohort for alumni only to continue coding discovery with the next Semester of Spring 2022.