FRUIT COVE, Fla. — A young girl is the first to do it. The first girl to reach the highest level in Code Ninjas, a program to teach kids coding in over 500 locations around the world, is Camryn Roberts.
She's lives in St. Johns County and goes to the Fruit Cove Code Ninjas location.
As of 2021, the US Census Bureau reported that women make up half of the US workforce but only represent a third of STEM jobs, like coding.
At Code Ninjas, they’re pushing girls to get involved and so far they’ve seen an increase in the number of girls learning how to code.
Their claim to fame is Roberts, who has reached black belt level at 14 years old.
"In this game you make cookies with pansies on them as you can probably get in the title," Roberts said about her video game 'Pansy Kitchen'. This is how she reached black belt.
She had to create a video game from scratch via coding.
Coding is the language that allows us to communicate with computers telling it what action to take and what to show on your screen
This game took Roberts a year to build from nothing.
“I spent a solid four months on the first stage because I couldn’t get some of the stuff right," Roberts said. "So actually saying it all works was very, yeah, that’s good! That’s good!“
“We don’t think of programming as creative but it is," said Yulia Willmore, owner of the Code Ninjas location where Roberts goes. "So she had to really start from scratch”
Willmore says their program is 30% female. She wants to see that number grow and more young girls get involved in STEM.
It's already grown since they opened 3 years ago.
“Even the tagline says kids have fun. Parents see results. Like we want it to be fun kids learn when it’s fun," says Willmore.
Roberts has completed the program.
She's only 14, so Willmore says they actually can't legally hire her yet but, she said when Roberts turns 15 this summer she’ll then start teaching other kids how to code.