Six Girls in Aviation Day events in Sep. will kick off the Girls in Aviation Day worldwide outreach, planned for Oct. 5.
The WAI Utah State University Chapter will hold its event on Sep. 14, and expects 150 participants, while the WAI Gone with the Wind (Atlanta) Chapter expects 400 participants.
WAI Stars of the North (Minneapolis) Chapter was the first chapter to host more than 1,000 girls. This year, its event on Sep. 21, will involve 2,000 girls. The relatively new WAI Bluegrass Chapter (Louisville, Kentucky) will hold its event as well on Sep. 21 with an expectation that 800-1,000 girls will attend. The WAI Sooner Chapter at the University of Oklahoma will hold its Girls in Aviation Day event on Sep. 21 as well to coincide with the university’s open house activities where they expect about 300 attendees.
Things are bigger in Texas, as the saying goes, and so is the WAI North Texas Chapter’s event which will welcome 3,000 attendees on Sep. 21 to the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Dallas’s Love Field.
“Events like these require an army of volunteers, and we give a shout out to them as well as to sponsors, speakers, corporate members, the role models who show up in their uniforms, or with their mechanics’ tools, the venues, and other aviation groups that work with us to make Girls in Aviation Day the overwhelming success that it is,” says WAI Outreach Director Molly Martin.
The majority of girls who attend a Girls in Aviation Day event are currently under-represented in the aviation community. Many come to Girls in Aviation Day via their connection with a Girl Scout troop or involvement with Girls Inc. What is stressed at every event are hands-on, fun activities that represent the variety of aviation careers– pilots in all aspects of aviation as well as mechanics, air traffic controllers, engineers, technicians and many other aviation careers.
“Although we love the power of these huge Girls in Aviation Day events, the power of Girls in Aviation Day comes not in the numbers, but from the connection between the girls and the adult role models when girls get to see people who look like them, look like their mothers, look like their aunts doing things, and holding jobs they had never imagined themselves doing,” adds Martin. “Our desire to share our passion for our aviation vocations and avocations is what unites WAI members.”
