About Pal.STEM4girls

Our Mission

"All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child"

Marie Curie

"Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated..."

Rosalind Franklin

letters written in 1940 (retrieved from https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/spotlight/kr/feature/biographical)

Pal.STEM4girls' mission is to instill love for STEM, inspire our girls, nurture confidence, curiosity, and perseverance in STEM, and create safe inclusive spaces for the students while partnering with parents, community, and schools.

I work with families, community groups, and schools across Kitchener-Waterloo region to make STEM learning inspiring, engaging, and a part of every-day life.

I offer hands-on, personalized, collaborative, in-person science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs to grade 1-6 girls every weekend and in-class programs in elementary schools via connecting the STEM concepts to everyday life and real-world challenges. My programs include resources for parents and educators to encourage the importance of STEM in their girls early on, and includes community events to spread the word around.

Here are the links to reach our works.

What's my story?

Growing up, I was inspired by my dad (papa), an Engineer who filled our home with tools, gadgets and stories about how things worked. From fixing lights during festivals to experimenting with everyday materials, he offered a safe space to explore, experiment and problem solve ~ experiences that sparked my passion for STEM from a young age.

What started as a fun STEM project with my daughter during COVID pandemic quickly grew into a neighbourhood and community initiative. As it continues to grow, I look forward to expanding and reaching more families and schools to encourage girls to develop love for STEM and persist in these fields.

The name "Pal" honours my papa 🙏

Factors that affect female representation in STEM Education?

Here are some of the factors that affect female participation, progress, and achievement in STEM Education

Individual skills and abilities
Parental beliefs and expectations, socio-economic status, and peers
school environment, teacher's beliefs and expectations,
socio-cultural norms with regards to gender in-equality and stereotypes in media

(retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000253479)

Why do we need to encourage females in STEM?

As per the recent HESA data, women and non-binary students represent only 31% of all core higher education STEM students in the UK.

This ratio further reduces in workforce in Math, Engineering (12%), and Computer Science (IT-19%).

(retrieved from https://www.stemwomen.com/women-in-stem-statistics-progress-and-challenges)

Similarly, as per the latest NSF reports, the percentage of women completing undergraduate studies in STEM is quite low (39% Physical Sciences, 32% Economics, 22% engineering, and 21.3% Computers and Information Sciences.

Similar to the UK workforce, the female presence in STEM workforce in North America is also low (23-24%) which further drops further when we calculate the percentage of females occupying leadership positions in STEM industries.

(retrieved from https://www.womentech.net/women-in-tech-stats)

What can we do to encourage females in STEM?

Some of the ways we can intervene are:

Help girls build self-efficacy, interests, and motivation to pursue STEM studies and careers.
Engage parents and families to address gender-based misconceptions about girls' abilities, possibilities, education and careers in STEM.
Encourage schools and teachers to address their own beliefs about gender stereotypes and abilities to design gender responsive curricula and unbiased assessments.
Challange societal and cultural norms around gender equality, gender stereotypes in media, and policies.

(retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000253479)

Our 2025 Wins!

Happy to share that we had an amazing Fall 2025 at Pal.STEM4girls This term we worked on many new topics ranging from health and fitness, experiments and explosions, physics and astronomy, to measurements and baking.

Our girls and their families had helped raise $345 through the Bake Sale over Summer 2025. I feel so blessed to share with you that we bought STEM kits and resources from that money and donated it to two grade-three classrooms at Cedarbrae Public School in Waterloo. The Principal Mrs Erin Agnello was very pleased with the donation and looked forward to talking to the teachers and seeing the grade three students use these STEM kits and resources.

We were also fortunate to get an opportunity to run our community STEM workshop for girls at the GTSA Petersburg in December. Thank you to the sangat for offering us the space to do so.

Teacher and Parent testimonials!

"Taru provided a wonderful hands-on enrichment opportunity for my Grade 5/6 students. She was knowledgeable, organized and patient with the kids. All of them were fully engaged in their learning centres and thoughtfully reflected on the science behind each activity!"

"This a well designed STEM activity. Excellent program and amazing team. Our daughter attended all the sessions and she always looks forward to the next one. It is fun, creative, and encourages the kids to explore. Will definitely be registering our daughter in the next workshop."

"My daughter went to STEM camp and she had a great time and learned a lot. She looked forward to going to camp every week and had a lot of conversations about science related topics."

"My daughter has attended a few workshops by STEM4girls and abosolutely loved them. Great content, environment, kid friendly. makes learning fun! Thanks for everything."

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