Teen-Turn aims to influence the course decision-making processes, inform participants on education and career options, and combat stereotypes by strategically changing how girls from underrepresented communities identify with STEM career environments through mentored summer work placements, after school activities and alumnae programming.Teen-Turn is now in its third yeah and they have grown their services from an initial pilot of 20 girls to providing for over 200 a year.

Their programming begins with a technology work placement in the summer after Junior Cert, during which participants are exposed to projects, introduced to role models and begin to blog about their time so to evaluate the effect of the experience. From there, the girls have the option to join after school activities which include science projects for BTYSE/SciFest, creating a social enterprise and app for Technovation, homework/grinds clubs, and coding groups at company partners.

Once participants have completed secondary school, they enter into the alumnae network, designed to help with qualification completion and the building of the social capital necessary to develop a career. Teen-Turn focuses on long-term results through this ‘Junior Cert to job’ support system. They are already on track to increase the numbers entering third level/acquiring STEM jobs by 1,000 girls by 2021.