CAGIS Seismic Impact Award for Equity in STEM awarded to 17-year-old Sukhman Sunner
This award recognizes girls, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming youth who have made a difference in their communities with their efforts to make science, technology, trades, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) more equitable, diverse, inclusive, or accessible for underrepresented groups in STEM.
Over the past year and a half, Sukhman has volunteered over 355 hours leading hackathons with the organization STEM1, to make engineering and coding more accessible for BIPOC students. She took the initiative to teach herself HTML and CSS through online course, so she could instruct the students and answer questions about their projects and designs. When she realized that some families could not participate because of financial hardship, she pitched and implemented a financial aid form for students who could not pay the $20 entry fee. Sukhman aims to create a wider community of BIPOC individuals in engineering and technology.
An honourable mention in this category goes to 16-year-old Nasreen Mir.