Hack Club
Days of Service
What is Hack Club?
Hack Club is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, supporting the largest network of highly technical teen hackers from around the world. Learn more about us here.
Overview
Days of Service is Hack Club’s initiative to support girls learning to code.
Working with local youth organizations, high school Hack Club leaders run one-day coding events (a day of service) that help girls and gender minorities write their first lines of code. They might build their first ever website, video game, application and even code a robot arm to draw!
Built for beginners learning to code, girls are supported by experienced Hack Clubbers. By the end of the day, every single participant builds something with code. In 2023, Hack Club girls ran Days of Service 6 cities, and in 2024 they'll increase events to more than 10 cities.
There were two amazing aspects to this event: 1) Girls are being taught by other girls, and I believe that when girls see it, they can be it. 2) Most of the time our girls are learning foundational coding, but in this experience, we saw the girls taking an opportunity to incorporate their creative voice within their projects.”— Anna Marie Leidelmeijer
Program Specialist, Girl Scouts of Greater LA
It was a magical day! We hope we can work with you again in the future.”- Jennifer LeValley
Program Specialist, Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts
Watch a video of our latest event:
Not all Days of Service are the same,
but here's what one could look like:
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 9am | Check in |
| 10am | Opening and pick a track (Design a Website OR Build a Game OR Create a circuit board) |
| 10:30am | Workshops: Learn all you need to build |
| 12:30pm | Lunch |
| 1pm | Work on your project with mentors |
| 2pm | Brain Break |
| 2:30pm | Final Coding Time |
| 4:30pm | Project Showcase & Closing Ceremony |
Interested in running a day of service?
Please reach us at nila@hackclub.com
Previous Days of Service
June, 2024 | Chicago, IL
Solstice was a social coding event open to all middle and high school students from the Boys and Girls Club of Lake County
See what went into planning
Photo credits: Sophia Deltas
June, 2024 | Austin, TX
Oasis had 25 students across Girl Scouts of Central Texas, Girls Who Code, and local schools + 7 hack club mentors from across the nation came together for an inspirational weekend
See what went into planning
Photo credits: Anahitaa Malhotra
May, 2024 | Seattle, WA
Evergreen was Hack Club's 9th Day of Service. We organized a day of coding in partnership with a local school district, the Renton School District! On May 3rd, 2024, our team of 12 Hack Clubbers gathered to host a 1-day hackathon for local students. By the end of the day, we had a variety of projects, such as circuit board designs, 3D modeling mockups, and even generative art that we drew with a robot arm! 🤖🦾
See what went into planning
Photo credits: Alex Deforrest
Mar, 2024 | Atlanta, GA
Blossom 🌸 was a full-day hackathon dedicated to empowering young women in technology, led by Sahiti, 17. As the largest gender-focused hackathon in Atlanta, the event collaborated with the Greater Atlanta Girl Scouts. Novice Girl Scouts embarked on an exciting journey, crafting their own PCB keychains and delving into an introduction of JavaScript to code drawings on Blot: Hack Club's Drawing Robot.
See what went into planning
Photo credits: Mridha
Feb, 2024 | Boston, MA
Think Like a Programmer was a hackathon organized in collaboration with the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts. 25 girl scouts learnt to build out wireframes for their apps to receive their Take Action award and 5 organizers built their first ever websites!
See what went into planning
Photo credits: Nila Palmo Ram
Nov, 2023 | Los Angeles, CA
Halo was a day long coding event organized in partnership with the Girl Scouts of Los Angeles! It took place in the Girl Scouts Innovation Centre with around 35 participants who spent the day learning to build a website using simple HTML, CSS and JavaScript or a video game on Hack Club's Sprig engine.
See what went into planning
Photo credits: Dieter Schoening
Oct, 2023 | Burlington, VT
Harvest was a halloween themed social coding event in Burlington! Students got together to build their first website and games on Hack Club's Sprig engine and fulled themselves on halloween candy!
See what went into planning
September, 2023 | San Antonio, TX
Lonestar was an 8-hour all-female/non-binary hackathon from September 15th-17th organized by Aileen and Zoya, our two hack clubbers from Texas! “I had a lot of fun with Hack Club. In just the day that I worked, I learned the basics of making a website and I really loved working with y’all. This helped me on how I want to open people’s eyes on global warming.” — Addie, a 7th grader from San Antonio
See what went into planning
August, 2023 | San Francisco, CA
Maggie, 18, and Kayley, 20, hosted Spark at Sentry’s office in San Francisco. With the help of their co-organizers, they ran a series of workshops—from building PCBs to Poker game strategies—and ran both a day-track and overnight-track for over 50 attendees. Prior to the hackathon, they organized a dinner with several tech professionals from the Bay Area hosted by Rebecca Lynn.
See what went into planning
July, 2023 | Salt Lake City, UT
Jasmina, 18, hosted a hackathon, Alpine, in Salt Lake City. She wrote emails to local businesses to get office space for her event, and wrote emails to the Girl Scouts and youth groups so they would bring guests. She and her co-organizers made workshops to run at the event. All of this is open-sourced on the link below.
See what went into planning
March, 2023 | New York City, NY
In March 2023, Belle, 18, and Abby, 16, hosted Horizon in NYC kicking off our partnership with the Girl Scouts. They ran a series of workshops and coded all day Saturday with 37 Girl Scouts from NYC. In the evening, they hosted a dinner with 10 professional female tech leaders. Over brunch Sunday, they recapped and planned for another Day of Service in a new city.
See what went into planning
Photo credits: KMM Photography