WeAreHERe (Peer-to-peer approach to enrolment of female students in STEM disciplines) – Politecnico di Torino (IT)
WeAreHeRe was the winning project at the hackathon "SheHacks@Polito. The novelty of this measure lies in the peer-to-peer approach to convince high school students that studying engineering is also suitable for girls. This is achieved by involving female students in engineering in the campaign: Through sharing their stories via social media and meetings in high schools as well as through online events and one-on-one interviews on Skype and Zoom (during the COVID-19 pandemic), female students of the different engineering courses become mentors for high school girls. The 30 peer mentors/year receive a compensation as student collaborators (around EUR 10 per hour for 50 hours each). Moreover, they are also intrinsically motivated: In 2020, the institute received more than 200 applications for 30 positions, much higher than the typical number of applications for other student collaborations.
