Square Brings Back College Code Camp for Women, Canadians Encouraged to Apply

San Francisco-based Square, the mobile payment processing outfit of Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, is ready to host its third College Code Camp, four-day immersion program for women studying computer science.

Nearly 50 young women have participated in the program from the US and Canada.

The first College Code Camp came in September while the second happened in January. Inspired by the program, a Square engineer had the idea for High School Code Camp, an eight-month program designed to teach young, high-school aged women in programming and prepare them for the AP Computer Science exam.

The next Code Camp will take place August 13-16 in San Francisco. Students will attend coding workshops (developed and taught by Square engineers), mentorship sessions, and tour Silicon Valley. They will also meet with Square’s inspiring women executives, including CFO Sarah Friar, business lead Françoise Brougher, and Engineering Lead Alyssa Henry.

College students in the U.S. and Canada can apply to the program at squareup.com/code-camphttps://squareup.com/code-camp. Twenty winners will be selected to participate.

“Today, 18 percent of computing jobs in the U.S. are held by women,” Friar said back in January when the program was conceived. “We created Code Camp to encourage more women to enter careers in technology and empower a new generation of entrepreneurs.”

Similarly, just 20 percent of software engineers are women, a rather paltry figure.

College Code Camp’s website says that at Square has “built a culture that encourages collaboration, diversity and entrepreneurship.” With the poor number of computing jobs in the US held by women, the startup knew it had to “do something to close the gender gap.” Thus, the Code Camps were created to inspire, educate and empower the next generation of women in technology.”