G-Hackademy
Kathmandu / BijuliBazar, Nepal, 2014, April 25
G-hackademy is an initiative to inspire, educate, and equip girls with computing skills so that thay can fit in the industry. G-Hackademy's vision is to reach gender parity in computing fields. Women only account for a small minority of programmers for many years. When one is in minority, it is common to feel that they don't belong to that sector and to be susceptible to stereotype threat. Our goal is also to eliminate the negative effects of being in a minority that female programmer have to deal with.
As an organization working on Girls & ICT sector, we had committed to organize the whole week of Girls in ICT as a celebration. We have altogether 10 female students in G-Hackademy committed to different programming languages including Java, PHP, .Net and designing.
For the celebration week, we first discussed on how to write effective blogs and key features to write the blog on 21st April, 2014. We also discussed the essential components for effective blogging. Ashish Khanal, one of the facilitators in G-Hackademy gave the presentation on the importance of blogs. The program was concluded with Mr.Sajjan Lamichhane, Facilitator of G-Hackademy, proposing to have a Blogathon among the girls the next day.
On 22nd April, the blogathon was held. Every schooler was serious about the blogathon as it was also during the auspicious occasion of Girls in ICT week. They have felt that the day is for them and they should do something special for the day. All the girls were so inspiring that some started blogging on their experience in G-Hackademy, some were giving credit to G-Hackademy for their success while some were giving their view on role of ICT in empowering women etc. All the blogs are posted by the participating girls at www.ghackademy.org/blog.
On 24th April, G-Hackademy joined the celebration organized by Equal Access Nepal with the support of Nepal Telecommunication Authority. The day focused on training visually impaired girls to learn computer skills. Our students took part in the program and talked with these girls to know their needs. Girls had suggested them to make the mobile / mobile application effective to their needs.
25th April 2014 was the official event day of G-Hackademy. We decided to teach female business students to create their own blog, going beyond our general focus on technical girls. We selected girls studying business since it is very essential to be a blogger in this field. They have to show their products, launch, and advertise, describe their products, write on their own and their business and many more. Kings College, BijuliBajaar sponsored the venue and managed the female business students.
Firstly, Dibesh Giri from Kings College facilitated the program. Sajjan Lamichhane presented the objectives of G-Hackademy and the history and objectives of Girls in ICT Day. Ashish Khanal discussed about the necessity of our own Blog in Business and gave them choice to learn the blog from Wordpress.com / Blogger.com and many more. Rajesh Khadka introduced Wordpress to the girls and taught the procedure to sign in there. Mentors from G-Hackademy, Rajendra Sharma and Utshab Bhetuwal were also there and assisted girls to learn the technical aspects to manipulate wordpress.com, including creating menu, creating category, create post & update it, create page and other basics. Some of the interesting blogs created by the girls are:
- pratikshyapoudel.wordpress.com
- pjkrk.wordpress.com
- ramitasht.wordpress.com
- nitarai.wordpress.com
- shreyasangrouls.wordpress.com
- faithnepali.wordpress.com
- prashansasunuwar.wordpress.com
- shrutidhungana.wordpress.com
- bishakapradhan.wordpress.com
- gurunghimani.wordpress.com
- domayagurung.wordpress.com
- ajkoirala.wordpress.com
- kabitakharel21.wordpress.com
