On November 2, 2016, Tonia Fox, Kim Galvin, and I – all paraglider pilots in the SF Bay Area – talked to a group of middle school girls from East Palo Alto about paragliding. We were invited by Rocket Fuel and Kiwoba Allaire, as part of the Girls of Color in STEM Education afterschool program sponsored by Rocket Fuel and <a href=”http://www.kiwobacares.org/”> Kiwoba CARES</a>.

We Are Pilots.You Can Be Too provides an introduction and simple overview of paragliding. We verbally described what was happening while watching the video. Currently the video is only available as-is; it will be updated later to include voiceover (or perhaps caption text) with the narrative. After the video, we went outside and the girls all got to try on our gear,  sit in harnesses hung from tree branches, and talk to each other on the radio.

The video was conceived and created by Julie Spiegler, with tons of support and additional footage from the paragliding community.

Pilots:
Julie Williams
Kim Browder
Julie Spiegler
Rachel Nanni
Denise Reed
Kari Castle
Becca Bredehoft
Dawn Westrum
Becky Brim
Gever Tulley
Lots of other pilots in Pacifica, Ruch, and Chelan

Video:
Julie Spiegler
Kari Castle and Isabel Ledesma (Women With Wings, karicastle.com)
Cade Palmer
Dawn Westrum
Todd Weigand (paraglidingtrips.com)
Becca Bredehoft (http://rebeccabredehoft.com)
Becky Brim
(mystery pilot at Potato Hill)

Music (all licensed under Creative Commons BY 3.0):
— From Free Music Archive
Inspiration by BoxCat Games
B-3 by BoxCat Games
Mt Fox Shop by BoxCat Games
— From CC Mixter
Organometronic by Alex Beroza
Emerge by Alex Beroza
I dunno by grapes

Thanks everyone!