Young women and girls have been called upon to take up ICT studies in order to improve their computer skills as well as become contributors to the socio-economic development of the country.
This was said on Saturday by Tigo’s Corporate Responsibility Manager Woinde Shisael while talking to a group of 100 secondary school girls during a special ICT training which was organized by ICT non-for profit organization, Apps & Girls, one of the recipients of Tigo Reach for Change Social entrepreneurship challenge.
“ICT is the fastest growing industry today and more jobs are created in this industry than any other. ICT has been identified as the industry that will lead forward world economies, improve lives of families across the globe and make the planet a smaller, more accessible place,” said Shisael.
She added, “Tigo’s corporate responsibility focus is on empowering the community with the use of digital tools. This is why I urge more women and girls to take a more prominent role in this process. It is a large misconception that girls cannot be good at ICT. The sky is always the limit for them.”
This project is supporting only girls because of the obvious gender gap in the ICT ecosystem for instance; few girls opt for ICT related courses, very few women in ICT related jobs and even fewer as ICT/technology entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, the Founder of Apps & Girls Ms. Carolyne Ekyarisiima who is also one of the recipients of Tigo Reach for Change $25,000 award this year, said that the training which was focused on imparting girls with website design skills aimed at inspiring and motivating girls to get involved in ICT.
“Due to the low level of girl’s participation in ICT, I decided to start Apps & Girls as a mechanism in closing this gap. I am also glad that with the support of Tigo, more than 100 girls will go back to home today with more knowledge of ICT and sharpened skills,” Ekyarisiima added.
According to Ekyarisiima the workshop aimed at enabling girls to build a very simple html website, code in html, understand the fundamentals of Html language and understand web technology.
The schools which participated included Jangwani Girls, Kibasila and Kisutu. The students were from age 14-18.
“People are making a living out of blogs nowadays, getting paid by Google and Yahoo, and frankly speaking blogging for example doesn't need a University degree or Masters to run. Teaching them Html as a starting point is a right thing to do, it is a very simple language to be understood by beginners who know nothing about coding and interesting for the age group,” concluded Ekyarisiima.
