In March 2015 Civil Society Promotion Centre, through its Resource centre, launched a big call with the aim to involve as many partners as possible in order to mark the International girls in ICT day in Bosnia and Herzegovina on a high level. From the beginning, we considered this topic as very important, so that we have decided to dedicate the whole week from 20 till 24 April to this topic – “Girls in ICT”.

Many companies and private individuals accepted our invitation to participate in activities that we proposed. Companies that have accepted our invitation and supported our initiative to mark this day and the whole week: Microsoft, Hub 387, Mistral Technologies, BH Telecom, Personal, Establish, Foundation “Hastor”, Japan International Cooperation Agency. Private individuals – big experts in the field of ICT have also supported us. It is important to stress out that the whole initiative and organisation was carried out without any donor funding’s or institutional support.
We created a special schedule for this week. Our main target were girls and young women - 13 – 19 years old – which are somehow at the turning point of their career and future profession choice. Younger and older girls were also able to participate – if interest was expressed. In order to mark this day and to raise awareness that women and girls are also a very important part of ICT profession we organized several activities:

1. “Talks with women experts in the ICT sector” – 6 of these events were organized.

2. Educational and creative workshops – topic: ICT - 9 of these events were organized.

3. Award competition for girls –topic: “What does ICT mean to me and why is it important for me?” This award competition started on 20 of April and will end on 20 of May. Girls can write an essay, make a picture, video etc. on the above mentioned topic. Three girls can win an unique internship in one of the best IT companies in Bosnia – Establish. Furthermore, they can win some prizes…like IT books, Official “Girls in ICT day in Bosnia” (that we made especially for this event), bags for laptops.

4. Open door day for 4 lucky girls – company: Establish (24 of April).

5. On 23 of April we organized also a big Press conference where we informed the wider audience in Bosnia about the International girls in ICT day.

6. Civil Society Promotion Centre staff were at several TV shows in order to inform the wider audience in Bosnia about the International girls in ICT day.

7. We invited schools and other organizations to join our initiative in Bosnia and to organize some special event in order to mark the International girls in ICT day. So far, we have received feedback from schools from Cazin, Sarajevo, Mostar and Zenica that they organized special events in their schools. They sent us pictures and their impressions. More feedback is expected.

8. We opened a special fb page “International Girls in ICT Day in Bosnia and Herzegovina”:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Girls-in-ICT-Day-Bosnia-and-Herzegovina

9. We opened a live stream channel: http://bit.ly/CPCDlive. In our letter, that we sent to all schools in Bosnia, we invited schools to organize special events to mark the day and to follow our activities via our live stream channel.

Girls that participated in our activities were very satisfied. Some of them offered us to organize per-to-per ICT education for younger girls (follow up activities).

Bosnia-and-Herzegoniva_press_clipping_girls_in_ict_week_in_resource_center.pdf