YWCA of Myanmar
Myanmar, 2016, April 28
On April 28, the National YWCA of Myanmar in collaboration with Girl Guides and Girl Scouts Association of Myanmar at YWCA building from 10:00 am to 2:00 p.m. There were approximately 200 participants, majority of them young women and girls. Young women and girls come from all walks of life—high school students, university students and young women from post armed conflict areas.
The morning session started with inspiration talk by young women who shared their hands on experience in ICT field.
Young women and Social Media: Hteik Hteik Aung , Co-founder and Executive Director of Myanmar ICT for Development Organization (MIDO), talked about " Building Peaceful Social Network" by highlighting the importance of use of social media for professional purposes . She talked about challenges experienced by young women through use of social media (such as cyber stalking, blackmailing, and hate speech) and how to manage such challenges. She also mentioned about the use of social media for education, political, social, networking purposes and women and girls should not be exploited by social media. She also talked about using social media for advocacy regarding conflict resolution –preventing hate speech that create communal conflict.
ICT and Business: May Zin Aung (disabled young woman—she was born without 2 hands, mother of 10 months old girl and career woman-see in photo ) talked about her life story which touched the heart of the audience. She grew up and attended high school in village school in Irrawaddy division. She then moved to the city to attend college (majoring in economics). After graudation she joined the Shwe Min Thar disabled foundation in computer section –developing websites, updating /uploading information of the foundation website. After the delivery of the baby, she stayed home with her baby. However as a career woman, she started to set up online shopping to sell various products. She encourages the young women attending the girls in ICT Day event that individual woman has the potential and should make use of it. Women should have access to income for economic empowerment. She told the participants not to give up hope and use the uniqueness of each of them to be economically independent. Her message is that through the setting up online store, she is able to operate her business and at the same time spend time with her 10 month old daughter at home.
Youth and ICT: Ei Myat Noe Khin works with Hpan dee Yar as civil society program associate. She is a graduate from University of Computer Studies. She talked about the program that she is running "Science is fun" that allows youth ages 6-15 to gain more exposure to new ideas and concepts related to science and technology. She talked about her passion on civitech, gender equality and child rights. She continued to talk about women's access to ICT –saying although female population is higher than male in Myanmar, only a small percentage of women use ICT and there is a need for equal access to use of ICT. Her group is encouraging and supporting girls and young women to pursue ICT careers.
In the afternoon session, ICT and Education was shared by Zin Mar Oo , General Secretary of YWCA of Myanmar. She talked about the education opportunities for girls and young women using technology – the websites to search for information. After that representative from Telenor (telecom community) presented about "Empowering Myanmar Society with Telenor's digital initiatives". The presentation emphasized that Telenor is supporting the creative ideas of young people to develop apps and job opportunities for youth.
After the talks and discussion sessions girls and young women were motivated to pursue IT subjects; get familiar with use of technology for education and career development.
On 30th April, Girls in ICT Day was celebrated in one of the local Ys in Pathein. The event was led by a young woman (Naw He Lay Lo Paw) , who is Y-young women committee chairperson . She also went to girls in ICT Day in Geneva in 2015. There were 130 girls and young women participated in the celebration. The event started with sharing session led by Naw – she talked about the importance of ICT for young women to connect with each other and women from the rest of the world—sharing info on girls issues for public awareness. Naw then showed the VDO of girls in ICT Day 2015 celebrated in Geneva. Then there was a session about use of social media and young women—importance of effective use of social media for sisters around the globe connect; how to prevent online violence and abuse girls and young women. There was hands-on session on writing blog. Local media groups were present (MRTV, Sky Net) –interviewing the organizers and the young women.
This event is the first time that the local Y takes the initiative to organize and girls and young women were inspired by the special talk from a young woman who had the opportunity to participate the celebration in Geneva.
