Meet Girlzilla. The towering, colorful construct is a robot, fabricated by a group of enterprising youngsters in the Lower East Side as part of an effort to get more tech and tools into the hands of girls.
All of the girls who helped build Girlzilla are members of the Lower East Side Girls Club, which was founded in 1996 as a place where girls from low-income families could learn entrepreneurial skills and, more recently, take part in activities that are grounded firmly in science, engineering and technology.
Girlzilla was one such activity, which the girls (11 in all) spent the summer building for today’s Howl! arts festival. And build they did, implementing all manner of serious tools, including pipe benders, metal cutters and a number of electronics—like the mounted video camera and projector that’s designed to display images from the surrounding crowd. [NYT]
