GBG Case Study

Google products help Peruvian social enterprise to inspire web-development students

About Laboratoria

• laboratoria.la • Lima, Peru • A women-only coding boot camp and job placement program for social impact • 5 employees • Founded in March 2014

Laboratoria is a forward-thinking Peruvian social enterprise that teaches women from low-income backgrounds how to code and helps them get started in technology. The first 16 girls graduated from their Laboratoria training in September 2014. One thrilled graduate, Mercedes, went from zero income to earning around US$300 a month—a huge jump. Her family income has increased by 40 percent. Founder Mariana Costa Checa comes from the tech industry. She believes the Internet is the future of Peru’s economy and can take the country from relying on natural resources to thriving by innovating. For her, Google is the country’s most important ally on this journey. Laboratoria started by giving Gmail addresses to her students. This seems like a small thing but it’s actually a giant leap: an email with a girl’s name on it adds credibility. Google Drive also came to play a very important part in storing and saving students’ information. Laboratoria started with donated computers, many of which were old and unreliable but with Google Drive, everything was safe and accessible. Girls who had never used a PC or organized digital information were astonished to discover they could also access their work from Internet cafes.

“These girls have gone from being merely consumers of technology to creators. They speak the language of the future.” — Mariana Costa Checa, Founder, Laboratoria Mariana explains the Laboratoria’s impact. “These girls have gone from being merely consumers of technology to creators. They speak the language of the future. Seeing them grow has been amazing. Now they can help their community by doing things like making a website for a small business. They’ve also grown as individuals in other ways. They had to learn English and to think for themselves, for instance.” Looking to the future, she continues, “We are applying to use ‘Google for Education’ to manage the class next year. We’ll be training 100 girls in 2015 and the program will have a higher emphasis on entrepreneurship. We have plans to grow across Peru and further into South America.”

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