11/7/2014 Preena Patel 3 min read
Written by Preena Patel
When Supriya Hobbs and Janna Eaves were attending their engineering and science classes at the University of Illinois, they realized there were not many female peers around them. In today’s society, there are fewer females going into engineering and the sciences than their male peers.
In 2013, there were only 18% of women receiving their Bachelors in Science degrees in Engineering. Due to their observations as well as this statistic, Hobbs and Eaves wanted to create something that would help girls continue their interest with science and engineering.
From that, Hobbs and Eaves create the company, Miss Possible.
The idea of Miss Possible started while Hobbs and Eaves were students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From there, they took their idea to the Cozad Competition where they were finalists. After the competition, the Miss Possible team was invited to participate in the Microsoft Imagine Fund to further expand on their idea.
Miss Possible is meant to create something that showcases and inspires young girls to take part in their interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Not only do these girls have a role model to look up to, they are physically able to play with their doll as well as online to strengthen their interest in STEM.
With each doll comes content for the Miss Possible app. Such content includes: the story of the woman’s life, activities that are interactive for the girls to participate in, as well as games for girls to play online.
The Miss Possible Dolls will help girls learn through hands-on physics and chemistry experiments with items that can be found around the house. While the girls feel like this is playing, they are actually learning important techniques and skills that are necessary to becoming real life scientists.
Recently, Hobbs and Eaves successfully completed their Indiegogo campaign which raised over $85,000 and exceeded their initial and stretch goal.
Currently, Miss Possible has three dolls: Marie Curie, Nobel Prize winter, Bessie Coleman, the first African-American female aviator, and Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. The Miss Possible team will be launching their newest doll, voted on by the backers of the Indiegogo campaign, in the near future.
The team is working to manufacture the first batch of dolls to be distributed to Indiegogo backers this January. They are taking orders through their website and are working to make their way onto the shelves of a toy store near you.