Barbie and the European Space Agency (ESA) have partnered to create a doll in the likeness of Samantha Cristoforetti, the only active female astronaut in Europe.<\/p>\n
Through the partnership, Barbie and the ESA aim to inspire girls to become the next generation of astronauts, engineers and space scientists. The collaboration between the two entities is part of the\u00a0Barbie Dream Gap\u00a0Project, an ongoing initiative with the goal of\u00a0leveling the playing field for girls\u00a0around the world.<\/p>\n
To kick off the collaboration, a series of new short-form videos aimed at parents\u00a0and\u00a0young girls will be released as the 50th\u00a0anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing\u00a0nears. They will show Cristoforetti welcoming girls from Germany, the U.K., France\u00a0and Italy into the\u00a0ESA European Astronaut center in Cologne, Germany, where they shadow her and quiz\u00a0her about her job. There will also be kids-targeted content highlighting Cristoforetti\u2019s achievements on Barbie\u2019s YouTube vlogger\u00a0channel.<\/p>\n
Isabel Ferrer, European director of marketing for Barbie, said: \u201cWe are proud to launch this collaboration with the ESA with a clear goal: to inspire girls to become the next generation of astronauts, engineers and space scientists. Barbie has always shown girls that they can be anything, giving them the opportunity to interpret different roles through play and embark on a countless number of careers encouraging imagination and self-expression. We know how important it is for girls to have role models and this new ESA collaboration helps us to take this to an astronomical new level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ersilia Vaudo-Scarpetta, chief diversity officer for ESA, added: \u201cWhile boys and girls generally achieve the same scores in science and math, few girls dream of becoming scientists, engineers, or space professionals. Social and cultural factors play an important role in the attitude of the family environment towards science and scientific professions. The European Space Agency is strongly engaged in promoting girls\u2019 interest in STEM subjects and space careers in particular, as we need a diversity of talents to imagine and enable the future in space. We are therefore proud to launch ESA\u2019s collaboration with Barbie, highlighting inspiring role models as the astronauts and encouraging girls to believe in themselves, look at the sky and dream high.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barbie and the European Space Agency (ESA) have partnered to create a doll in the likeness of Samantha Cristoforetti, the only active female astronaut in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1033,"featured_media":16707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[1149],"class_list":["post-16706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-barbie","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\n