[smitikshah]

I totally think by having peers try encouraging other peers to join, it is much more effective that having mentors join. Gender aside for a second, a mentor originally offered the idea of me to join. Though I didn't take it too seriously. However, when my best friend told me about it and tried to get me to join, she managed to convince me in less than 10 seconds. I guess "if a friend jumps off a bridge should you?" applies here (in a positive manner of course).

Having noticed a lack of girls active in the STEM community in my district, I decided to change that by not only encouraging girls to participate by word of mouth, but by doing small little activities and camps in my area over the summer to hopefully get more involved.

I feel like having girls show other girls how awesome STEM is, and how they can totally get involved - you get the most effective outcome. Personally if a girl my age came up to me telling me how great something is, I'd be more apt to look into it, as opposed to a significantly older male. The second best option would be to have a male my age tell me about it - it would work, maybe just not as well.

The only thing I don't fully agree with is the "If we have a shortage of females on the team, mentors need to work with the females more." While encouraging women to join and get interested in STEM (something they may not have done had known about before) is really supportive, I don't know if I'd feel comfortable with the special treatment while on the team. I think mentors working more with a person only applies to girls, or anyone for that matter, that doesn't have a specific skill that a mentor would be able to teach them.

Though this is just some personal input I have. I thank you for encouraging girls in the engineering community, Any effort that you put in is worth it and greatly appreciated!