White House Honors Teen Who Encourages Girls to Code

Swetha Prabakaran dreamed of becoming a physician, using the power of medicine to heal the sick and to are for the ailing. But then during her freshman year, she took a computer science class and learned about programming. She becoming fascinated with coding and the intricacies of how to teach computers to make life easier for people. “I learned I could help people in the same way with computers and not just a stethoscope,” said Swetha, 15, a junior from Ashburn, Va.

Earlier this month, Swetha was honored at the White House as one of 11 young women named “champions of change,” for her work as the founder of Everybody Code Now! The nonprofit operates in 12 states and has partnerships in India and Ghana to help elementary school students, from kindergarten through fifth grade, learn how to code. According to a White House statement, the Champions of Change program “was created as an opportunity for the White House to feature individuals doing extraordinary things to empower and inspire members of their communities.”

Swetha said that she began teaching young students how to code as a sophomore hoping to pass on her own excitement for the seemingly limitless potential of computer programming. Swetha has created a Pokemon game and is now working on an app to streamline the process for food banks to get donations into the hands of the needy.

Here is her website.

Credits:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/white-house-honors-teenager-who-inspires-girls-to-do-computer-coding/2015/09/27/9a9cc036-6080-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html