Generation Y can text, whatsapp, instagram, facebook and tweet but the one of the chasms opening up between us and those pesky Gen Zs is the ability to code. It's all very well and good to be able to use apps, but nowadays you've got to be able to build them, too. Enter supermodel Karlie Kloss (ELLE's March cover star), who's just expanded her initiative 'Kode With Klossy' into a summer camp in a move to teach and encourage more young girls to code.
The programme will provide nearly 80 scholarships to young women and girls in New York, Los Angeles and Karlie's hometown, St Louis to attend a two-week Kode With Klossy summer camp.
The camp will teach students the fundamentals of Ruby, a general-purpose programming language. The students should, by the end of the programme, be able to build their own functional web-app based on their own interests.
Karlie explained that a large part of the initiative was to do with gender inequalities in the tech industry: "While there are endless creative applications of code, there are also many barriers to accessing computer-science education.
"Too few girls are encouraged to embrace their inner nerd and pursue math, science and programming. Women are underrepresented in computer-science classes, college majors and jobs."
She went on to point out that while women now make up over half of undergraduate college students, only 12% of computer-science degrees are awarded to women.
Let's not forget that Karlie has been getting involved with women in tech from all angles. She produced and starred in an exclusive video series for ELLE UK where she interviewed trailblazing women in the fields of science, engineering and technology for their smartest career advice.
If you're keen to apply to Karlie's summer school, head here. The ELLE team already had their coding experience and it was bloody great - we'd thoroughly recommend.
