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Istanbul, Turkey, 2013, April 25

Girls in ICT Day in Istanbul, Turkey

20 young girls between the ages of 12-14 arrived at Cisco Istanbul Office with their teachers and the Directors from Ministry of Education. The school chosen by the Ministry was Fatih Hattat Rakım Orta Okulu. . It was the first time for the girls to ever come to a company or "such a tall building" and they were all very excited. To emphasize the importance of ICT, the Cisco employees joined the event, talking about their jobs, careers in ICT, future of IT and their personal experiences. Participating speakers were from all segments of Cisco -NetAcad AAM and Quality Team, Business Development, Sales RSM, LOAMs, TAC Engineers, SEs, Cisco Capital, Legal-, emphasizing the penetration of IT in different sectors and different roles within IT sector.

After the common session with Cisco people, the girls broke down to groups for workshops with female Cisco employees, which were followed by a guided tour to the labs with an engineer.

The girls joined the common TP session with the rest of the countries in which they had a chance to experience the TelePresence technology. At the beginning of the event they were shown the video of telepresence solutions in the recent movie Battleship, which looked like fiction. Experiencing the real thing made such a mesmerizing effect on the girls.

The participating school was chosen by General Management of Ministry of Education in Istanbul, which is a school from a disadvantaged neighborhood. At the end of the day, the girls saw the future in IT, and most expressed that they "will come back here to work". They were also asked to write about their experience of the day, where all of them described with words like "wonderful and amazing" and that they'd "never forget this day". Finally the answer to the question of "what does Cisco do?" was simple but impressive; "technology is very important and Cisco does very important things"​