About Space Engineers
Space Engineers is an exciting project that inspired girls through engineering and science. It also provided engineers with an opportunity to engage with girls, and share their skills, passion and expertise in an innovative way and interesting way.
With the support of 28 volunteer engineers, 331 Girlguides from 29 Girlguiding units took part in a space-themed immersive experience while working towards gaining their Space Engineers badge over a number of weeks.
Although women are under-represented in engineering it was surprising that 64% of the volunteer engineers were female. The aim was to recruit at least 50% so this exceeded the expectations.
The engineers, who came from all over the UK, volunteered in a number of ways such as; helping to design the Girlguiding badge and Moon base activities, creating short videos, connecting with the Girlguiding units, and being interviewed by the girls.
Project journey
Four training sessions were arranged to allow the volunteer engineers an opportunity to gain some background knowledge of Space Engineers and the Artemis programme, as well as guidance on how best to work and communicate with girls.
Two further sessions enabled engineers to discuss various ideas for the project and give their valuable input. And finally an additional two sessions were arranged to support engineers that were linked to Girlguiding units to help them prepare.
The project culminated in 4 Space Engineer Activity days, each held in a different location around East Kent during May and June 2023. Here the girls were blasted off to the Moon and worked in small teams to solve the five fun engineering challenges as well as participating in secondary experiences such as feeling the vibrations of a launch and 3d printing a real space wrench.
Watch 1st Hampton Brownies' fantastic video of their day
To find out more about this project, read our case study and hear more from the project team.
