Forget hours and hours of council meetings. PHX11, the government-access channel turned cable station in Phoenix, has discovered the Sophia Grace and Rosie for the budding urbanist set. And they used the stars to highlight an important message for girls.
In a clip featuring the Phoenix Public Works Department, which deals with the trash disposal of almost 400,000 households, two young girls are the stars. They’re awestruck by a relatively rare sighting: a female garbage truck driver. (Of the works department’s nearly 275 truck drivers, around five are women.) Doris Berg stops on her route to meet the kids, and takes the chance to echo their grandmother’s lesson about not letting gender bias inform their career-making decisions. The girls gift her with a handmade card and get a chance to sit in the big truck.
“That’s what we’re trying to do with our girls, is promote those activities that are involved in STEM so that they can actually know that they can be whatever they want to be,” says Katy Kennedy, the girls’ grandmother, in the clip.
As the producer of the video notes at the end, “Who knows? [The girls] could design or engineer new ways to pick up trash.”
Here’s the full clip.
Marielle Mondon is an editor and freelance journalist in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia City Paper, Wild Magazine, and PolicyMic. She previously reported on communities in Northern Manhattan while earning an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.
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