ROCHESTER, N.Y. — For some girls, like Serenity Stephens, the Central Library has become the perfect place to explore their interests.

“While we were getting books from this library, my mom saw a poster about girls who code and then she asked me if I wanted to join and I said 'yeah!' ” Stephens said.

Girls Who Code is an international nonprofit working to close the gender gap in technology. It's a gap that, according to Girls Who Code, has existed almost as long as the World Wide Web, with women making up only 37% of computer scientists.

“And that was back in 1995. Everyone would expect this number to go up, but unfortunately, it came down to today [to] only 22% of women who are in tech,” said Faezeh Jahan, librarian and instructor for the Girls Who Code club at the Rochester Central Library.

Despite tech layoffs in recent years, the demand for women in tech couldn’t be more important.

“Only 40,000 CS majors graduate, of which lesser numbers actually land a job or actually stay within the field,” Jahan said. “So there is a big demand. There’s a big demand and this is where Girls Who Code comes in.”

The high demand prompted the club to open up to allow boys and girls to encourage young children to choose STEM.

“Although our most talented ones are girls,” said Jahan.

“I’m starting to learn how to start making games, how to make people run when you click on a certain button," Stephens said. "You can make people like go across the screen and you can make them teleport and stuff."

The best lesson girls learn isn’t even the coding itself.

“We should encourage our daughters, our sisters, women, in general, to be able to express themselves,” Jahan said. 

Encouragement Serenity feels and even passes on to other girls her age.

“They say, ‘oh, I really wanna join, what library is it? What library is it?' ” said Stephens.