Last weekend I had the honor of being a UX Design mentor for Hack Grrl, a mostly female hackathon, which launched the challenge of how to decrease gender inequality in the world. This event was created by Nathalia Lima and Lavínia Paganini, two students from CIN (UFPE), to encourage girls to program more, develop their skills and gain more confidence in their abilities.
Everything really starts with an idea, doesn't it? A small spark that ignites and spreads like wildfire, that infects the soul, that creates communities, that inspires people to dream together? that changes the world. I want to thank you for transforming my life and that of each of the participants in this beautiful event that you built with so much effort. Women's inclusion was present in every detail. It was amazing!
Explaining how I feel being a mentor is like trying to explain what it feels like to be in a long hug... It is by making people great that I feel I am fulfilling my purpose, it is by provoking them that I sharpen their critical thinking, so necessary in co-creation, it is by raising their spirits when they can see no way out that they learn to have empathy in difficult moments and to believe in themselves when everything seems impossible, it is by showing them that we do not have the world's solutions that I keep them aware that what we do is to build paths... that will still be walked, shared, questioned, destroyed, redefined, recreated.
To be a mentor, more than to guide others, is to be open to listen, to understand, to question, to inspire people to identify their whys and whens, to establish new connections of ideas, to co-create possibilities, to build collaborative paths that understand innovation as a way to reduce the power of one human being over another, to improve human interactions, to reduce pain and meet needs? to give flow to a more inclusive world.
To the mentors who shared this experience with me and to each of the teams, my enormous gratitude! Your humility to learn was immense, the dedication of those who gave their best was inspiring, the will to really improve women's performance in the world was admirable. I am absolutely certain that each one of you is no longer the same after this weekend. There is a higher purpose now. Let's change the world?
#hackathon #hackgrrrl #portodigital #inclusaofeminina #mulheres#inovacão #tecnologia #design @portodigital @vtex @grupominas @laboratoriolouco
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