Tallinn: Viimsi, near Estonia’s capital of Tallinn, is home to Mukesh Ambani’s Jio office, which stands out for the Indian flag at the front of the building. At the heart of the office are shelves of black boxes containing drones and other technology paraphernalia, not for the use of the engineers, but for school girls across Estonia.
From the building’s basement, Taavi Kotka, head of Jio’s research centre in Estonia, has waged one of the most powerful wars for the last seven years—to promote women in STEM across the country.
Filled to the brim with the boxes, the basement is home to HK Unicorn Squad, an after-school programme to promote education in robotics and other sciences for girls across Estonia. One of the founders of the programme, Kotka, dressed in a black hoodie, with the mannerisms of an eccentric technology entrepreneur, highlights how the room is essentially mission control for the programme, which has helped over 5,000 girls aged between nine and 12 years in the country learn the basics of robotics and technology, and more recently those between the ages of 16 and 18.
“At the age of 9, my daughter Helena was cut from a robotics class in her school. The class originally had roughly 30 students, with only 2 girls. When the class size was cut to 15, both the girls were removed from the class. That is when Unicorn Squad was founded,” Kotka said of the motivation behind the after-school programme.
Keshav Padmanabhan
The Estonian government at the time believed that girls were not interested in technology, and that the cost of educating them in the field is prohibitive. Combined with the firm idea that there exists a shortage of qualified teachers to teach STEM subjects, the government chose the easiest option it had when it decided to make cuts to the technology classes—remove the girls from the class.
Taavi Kotka and his wife Kerstin, also one of the founders of the programme, set out to prove the officials wrong. What started out as an activity for their daughter and the people in the community, today has seen roughly 5,000 Estonian girls participating in the activities of HK Unicorn Squad in the last seven years, with a group in every county of the country.
Kotka, the former Chief Information Officer of Estonia, reached out to friends via social media platforms and brought together a group of 17 girls in 2018 to start their own programme revolving around robotics and the sciences. And thus began HK Unicorn Squad.
“I didn’t understand at that point [in time]. I had a feeling at that moment, that I’m not good enough and it didn’t feel really nice. I saw how upset my father was and I understood that this was a big problem,” Helena told ThePrint on how she felt at being informed that she was no longer a part of the robotics class.
Originally intended to introduce STEM topics to girls in the 9-12 age group, the initiative has expanded in the last couple of years to include high school students between the ages of 16 and 18. The after-school programme is built in a manner where girls from across Estonia have access to materials for their classes.
The Unicorn Squad model
The programme consists of roughly two courses held every year—in spring (from March to May end) and in autumn (September to November). Each course has 10 classes that last for about two hours each. A summer camp with around 700 girls is also held at the HK Unicorn Squad offices for around three days annually.
A group consisting of roughly 10 to 12 girls share the resources and classes sent by the Unicorn Squad from the basement in Viimsi. The Squad consists of a headmaster and two other individuals managing the logistics, apart from the Kotkas.
“We created a sharing model, which focused on sending the 6 boxes [of robots] to different places across Estonia. This cut the cost down roughly 20 times. The same drone for example goes to 20 different places in one season,” explained Kotka.
He added that “the girls are working in pairs. Usually we pack five to six robots in one box. There is one robot per pair. If one works in pairs you are more confident. Different groups with different techniques.”
There is very little theory, which is usually explained through videos that are planned and recorded by the HK Unicorn Squad team. Helena, who has been a part of the lessons since the beginning, points out that the actual lessons or theory “are never too much”.
“It is maybe around 10 minutes of theory and lessons, before we go practical. It has always been more about hands-on activities,” said Helena.
Triin Niit, a leader for one of Unicorn Squad’s groups in another borough near Tallinn, had waited for over six months before starting a local group consisting of 12 girls, including her nine-year-old daughter.
“Learning with Unicorn Squad is what learning should be like. You are learning by building stuff and that is the essence of why it is working. I am a teacher by education, so I can grasp how right the Unicorn Squad is doing with their training,” Niit told ThePrint.
The lessons sometimes extend past the two-hour mark, with the girls often continuing their own experiments through the activities, pointed out Niit. For her group, the lessons are usually scheduled on Sundays, which allows the girls to usually continue their activities after the session.
The lessons are planned for six seasons, which take about three years for the groups to complete. Taavi points out that the best time to get someone interested in a subject is at the age of eight or nine. In the last eight years, roughly 74 per cent of girls have completed all six seasons between the ages of nine and 12.
At least 98 per cent complete the first three seasons before dropping out. In Niit’s group, which has completed exactly three seasons, all of the girls have remained a part of the group.
“It is also dependent on the group leader, the parent or the teacher. If other parents do not support it, it is tough to run this programme for 3 years. Many times the group falls apart because of the group leader,” Taavi Kotka said.
Schools have also been engaging in the programme. While five schools across Estonia have so far allowed the Unicorn Squad to become embedded in the curriculum, there are others that allow the after-school programme to take place in their premises, offering the infrastructure available to carry out the activities.
HK Unicorn Squad is looking at expanding its reach, with a potential expansion to Finland in the offing. There is interest in opening groups in the Scandinavian country, with an open call for the creation of groups available on the website of Unicorn Squad.
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Building a community
HK Unicorn Squad is not just an activity for girls, but it is also building a community amongst the parents and teachers, and connecting students with those from other schools and boroughs. The programme is especially popular amongst rural schools, which may have lesser access to funding, facilities, and materials required to offer their students the same level of education as their urban counterparts.
“I have a better relationship with my daughter’s classmates’ parents because of the Unicorn Squad activities. The children meet outside in playgrounds, or out together, or go to each other’s home to play together. All of this is because of this group. It has created more communication amongst the girls,” Niit said.
The parents are in touch with one another on social media platforms to organise the sessions and pick up any necessary materials, for example fruits and vegetables if the exercise is to understand how they conduct electricity. A few times, when Niit has not been able to take care of the sessions, other parents have stepped in.
But the programme has also helped Niit in other ways. When she attended the first session for group leaders, they were given cinnamon buns. The idea was to associate the smell and taste of cinnamon with the activities of Unicorn Squad.
“I bake cinnamon buns or rolls for the girls before every session. I can say I have become much better at baking them these days,” said Niit on a lighter note. However, in the couple of sessions she has missed, when other parents have stepped in, the girls have complained of missing the cinnamon buns—pointing out how the programme has built in various methods to be associated with.
The organisation also gives out hoodies of different colours to signify the seasons that the girls have completed, similar to belts in martial arts.
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More girls in tech?
Women are underrepresented in the technology sector across the world. In 2023, only 19.4 per cent specialists in ICT in the European Union were women. For the Kotkas, this is a result of the lack of access to technical education, combined with prevailing sentiment that girls would prefer to study other things.
“All the girls are provided the same content from the ages of nine to 12. Everyone starts from zero. At that stage girls are not given the basic knowledge, which the boys have and this has created a system of uneven competition, which further made girls less keen on the subject,” said Kotka.
For Helena, her interest in robotics arose because her father was an engineer who suggested it as an extracurricular activity. Kotka highlights that when girls enter the programme, they are asked whether they are interested in an ICT job, and around 10 per cent or less answer in the affirmative.
Even for those who do, it is because one of their parents is in the field, according to Kotka. The number of girls who would consider a job in ICT rises to roughly to 86 per cent by the end of the programme,
In its early days, some of the parents pushed for groups consisting of both boys and girls, and were sceptical of the focus solely on girls-only groups.
“Parents pushed for mixed groups, where around 3 or 4 mixed groups were started, but they all ended within a year,” said Kotka.
For Helena, who is about to graduate from high school, a future in ICT may not be of interest to her, but she considers her knowledge of technology to be a “superpower” in whatever field she eventually decides to pursue.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)