International Day of the Girl Child 2023

As girls continue to face enduring challenges around the world, the International Day of the Girl Child is dedicated to promoting girls’ empowerment, enabling them to realize their rights and achieve their full potential. Investing in their education is essential as it promises a more equitable and prosperous future, enabling women to play an equal role in solving the issues of climate change, political conflict, economic growth, disease prevention, and global sustainability. In fact, many girls are already advocating solutions and driving change in their communities.

Girls can change the world today and tomorrow as workers, scientists, entrepreneurs, mentors, and leaders. At La Fondation Dassault Systèmes, we are committed to supporting projects that foster interest in science, engineering and technology, break down barriers, and encourage girls and young women to venture into traditionally men-dominated careers through skill development programs, mentoring, and role models. So that every girl is able to choose who they want to become and follow their career aspirations.

In that perspective, here are three projects that align with International Day of the Girl Child 2023, embracing the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including Gender Equality and Quality Education.

OSE inGÉ, "OSE intégrer une Grande École" ("Dare to integrate a prestigious engineering school") , is a new student social outreach program led by our partner the ISAE-SUPAERO Foundation based in Toulouse, France. It provides personalized mentoring for young women and/or scholarship students throughout their preparatory journey to access prestigious and demanding engineering schools, in order to help them build their plan for the future and develop their ambitions.

"Campus au Féminin" ("Girls on Campus") is another equal opportunity initiative addressing middle school and high school girls in rural areas or underserved neighborhoods, involving inspirational women engineer role models, to raise the girl students awareness about higher education, STEM pathways and the variety of career opportunities.

The objective of these two programs is to spark interest in STEM and scientific or technological careers, illustrate the diversity of engineering jobs and academic backgrounds, fight social and territorial determinism, and deconstruct gender stereotypes.

• School ASPIRA: Equipping girl school students with STEM skills.
• Graduate ASPIRA: Supporting engineering students for four years, from admission to graduation, through scholarships and personalized mentoring from Dassault Systèmes women volunteers.
• Rural ASPIRA: Giving exposure to advanced technical skills and career prospects in various domains (solar and electronics, digital fabrication, and bio technology) to girls from rural areas via "Makeathons" or in other words, residential camps where girls make things together using technology and tools.

Learn more about the ASPIRA program.

The Jumpstart Fellowship program, led by Mass Robotics and supported by La Fondation Dassault Systèmes in the United States, encourages diverse high school girls in the Boston area to learn about career opportunities in robotics. By providing these students with access to technical skills - from programming to design and simulation to hands-on building, prototyping and testing - mentoring, internships at local robotics companies and a strong professional network, the program helps them develop an appetite for STEM and robotics, build their confidence with technology and find the support they need to pursue their higher education and careers.

This initiative was very successful in 2021, 2022 and 2023, as evidenced by the words from one of the participants in the 3rd cohort of the program : “I found my passion in engineering and coding, my future has never felt clearer”.