ROY BERENDSOHN

She never talked about it, but my mom, a German immigrant, had a tough childhood. An early surgery left her with a pinned hip and a permanent limp. When she was in her teens, she was conscripted by the Nazis. They sent her to Hamburg to care for displaced children who had fled the advancing Russian army. Once, she’d tell me, she was shot at by a low-flying Spitfire. The plane came so close that she could clearly see the pilot’s white scarf as he banked and flew away. Later she would survive three days in a collapsed bomb shelter.

Despite all that, she remained positive. In fact, the best meal she ever ate, she said, was served to her by the occupying forces. As my mother was led to the chow line, she wondered if the whole thing was a hoax. She thought the British might just line the Germans up and shoot them. Instead they served them food: greasy beef stew over noodles. It was a meal my mother never forgot.

Food was her way of connecting with people. No matter what my three brothers and I would put her through – no matter how many times she’d come at us with a wooden spoon, which we knew we had to stand and take, and not only because we always deserved it – she never let us miss a meal together. We had a neighbour, a young guy who was always getting in her hair. One particularly bad day, she noticed that he was limping. “Get in here,” she yelled. He shrunk at her voice and hobbled into the house. She found out he had gashed his foot. My brother came home a short time later to find Mark on the couch, his foot freshly bandaged and a sandwich in his hands.

Even as she neared the end of her life, when her hospice nurse would come by, Mom would put up a pot of coffee and set out a plate of cookies. When the nurse claimed to be on a diet, Mom lowered her bifocals, looked the woman up and down and said, “A diet? You must be kidding. You’ll have a cookie.” The nurse knew exactly what was expected of her. She had two. PM

neering, the Womeng team found that a lack of awareness of the opportunities out there was the greatest barrier. As well as misconceptions about what it is that engineers do. Cue images of overalls, boots, construction sites and guys. Guys in hard hats, guys poring over blueprints, but… guys.

And so that was the initial inspiration behind Girleng: to change perceptions about the engineering field for girls, inspiring them to pursue careers in that industry and showcase the broad nature of the field. The pilot programme was launched in 2009, with a handful of high school students at a university campus. Their simple goal was to show young women that they, too, could be responsible for coming up with cool and amazing things.

GIRLENG IS APPLICATION- based; students have to RSVP to take part. And the demand for courses is growing. “In Limpopo, last year there were 1 000 applicants, so the list had to be cut short,” Moosajee says. “We physically couldn’t do that, venues didn’t allow – the only solution being to split the event in half and hold them separately.”

The organisation constantly has to field questions from teachers, schools and individual students wanting to know when the next Girleng course is being offered. Even young men have slipped into the back of the halls and venues to sit among the ladies.

“They bring their sisters and friends and want to know about engineering, we really don’t mind. We want to inspire all minds to study engineering. But our focus will always be on girls, because that’s our mandate at Womeng,” says Moosajee.

As the Girleng programme grew and moved into other cities across South Africa, it evolved from just information and awareness to the girls actually working on projects that reflected the sort of challenges that might come about in daily life as an engineer. One of the more recent exercises involved them building a car out of trash, for example. The girls, split into groups, build vehicular structures that not only have to move easily, but also have to safely house and transport eggs. Whether the group is successful or not depends on the condition of the eggs after running them down a ramp. And if they are not, they are allowed to start back at square one, redesign and attempt the task again. Other activities have included building tall structures out of straw. From what Moosajee has shared, it sounds like the girls are having a great time discovering

“There was so much learning happening through gamification, and we were loving it,” she says.

AS A SMALL ORGANISATION, WomEng wasn’t tracking the progress and impact Girleng had. For example: how many students were planning on studying engineering? How many were not going to? How many were going to enroll? How many are now considering it. But, beyond just the initial goal in changing mindsets, Womeng has done surveys on

girls who had gone through Girleng. They found an 80 per cent shift in number of girls thinking that they, too, could become engineers. And in some provinces there has been a 60 per cent increase in those who at least aspired to becoming an engineer.

With engineering studies boasting some of the highest dropout rates and highest fees in the world – up to 66 per cent fall by the wayside from the first to second year – the cost to the economy is tremendous. So, the organisation believes that the Girleng programme is at least a form of guidance.

Realistically, not every girl who is on board in the programme will enrol to study engineering. More importantly, though, more girls are applying and more girls will at least know that engineering is not what they want to do.

Besides the programme’s broader goals, it does have more specific outcomes. Right now there are 60 fellows in South Africa and 50 in Kenya about to graduate.

“Last year, we started thinking that as Womeng turns 10 years old, we’ve seen 10 000 girls through different programmes and many who’ve become engineers. Up to 90 per cent came through the Girleng programme,” Moosajee says. They have raised the bar at tertiary level as well, with classes comprising a 40 to 50 per cent female-to-male ratio for firstyear engineering students.

INCREASINGLY THERE are moments of affirmation that reflect the swelling numbers of graduates. “About two years ago, we were running a university-level programme and at the businesswomen dinner I sat next to one of our fellows. She told me that she had been on the Girleng programme and became an engineer because of our organisation,” Moosajee recalls.

Even more powerful was what happened when Moosajee shared the story with the assembled group of students, fellows and mentors. Five other women put up their hands and stated that they too, had come through Girleng.

Another time, while shopping at a fabric store, Moosajee was approached by a young woman. She was a civil engineering student at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology as a direct consequence of her participation in Girleng.

“We haven’t tracked them all. There are some in the system who are engineers that we don’t know came through our programme. Every year, there are Girlengs who graduate, some of whom have come back freely as volunteers and help to empower even more girls.”

What’s really encouraging is that Girleng is bigger than just South Africa. Last year, more than 4 000 participants across the country were involved. Even in the parent body, Womeng, the Girleng team is by far the largest of the leadership corps. It also provides the biggest group of volunteers who get trained to assist the programming. Girleng has teams in Limpopo, Kwazulu-natal, the Western Cape and Gauteng.

Recognising that Womeng has been doing amazing work by attracting more females into the engineering field and retaining more of them in the industry, the African Union awarded the organisation the title of Best Vocation and Education Training Programme in Africa. That award was made at a ceremony in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, attended by the South African Ministers of Science and Technology and Higher Education.

Seeing the opportunity to spread awareness deeper into the continent, Womeng has expanded to offer GirlEng-style courses in Kenya, in central Nairobi and Kirichu through the help