Home Page

Girlstart (formerly SmartGrrls) is a not-for-profit organization in Austin, Texas founded in October 1997. Its mission is to encourage young women to believe in themselves and pursue paths to education and opportunity in science, math and technology.

Girlstart programs utilizes hands-on activities in math, engineering, physics and computer science to educate, inspire and support a new generation of leaders in science, math and technology. The Program offers:

• Classroom presentations on science, math, technology, multimedia and literature
• Youth leadership training
• Field trips
• Guest speaker series
• Mentorship support

Girlstart volunteer mentors are primarily college level women from three departments at UT Austin: the Texas Institute of Computational and Applied Mathematics, the College of Natural Sciences, and the Student Chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. Most volunteers are women either studying or working in math, science, engineering or technology fields.

Girlstart initiated a virtual "Take Our Daughters to Work Day", allowing girls all over the U.S. to chat via their web site with working women from a variety of fields. The site also allows girls and volunteers to work together to to build web pages, play games, take quizzes, and explore career options.

Girlstart has used the Virtual Volunteering Project web site to develop its own policies for online volunteers, as well as a volunteer application and task descriptions. Since 1998, they've enjoyed working with online volunteers very much. "It allows us to utilize the talents and services of resources who might otherwise go untapped," says T.C. Hiner of Girlstart. "I believe that overall volunteer service opportunites and participation will only increase as virtual volunteering becomes more commonplace. I think a great many agencies are missing out on a fantastic opportunity by not figuring out ways to engage their volunteers virtually."

Hiner cites a number of factors as reasons their virtual volunteering programs have been successful. "We try, whenever possible, to involve volunteers in a mixture of on and offline volunteering activities. We often find that folks who start out online become interested in moving to on-site or event opportunities. We must always be very careful about the kind of online opprtunities we offer. Tasks must be very specific and usually rather short."