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ITU launches Tech Needs Girls Prize to spark creativity
Seeking the unique voices and talents of girls to
invent our future
Geneva, 11 October 2012 – To mark the first ever
International Day of the Girl
Child, ITU members and partners are today joining forces to launch the Tech
Needs Girls Prize, a new global technology competition designed to inspire more
girls to embrace technology and invent the future.
Our future is being shaped by technology and, with over 95% of all jobs now
having a digital component, the information and communication technology (ICT)
sector is an exciting place to be. Yet, as a global shortage of ICT
professionals looms and the uptake of girls and women into ICT-related study
declines, research reveals that technology has an image problem. Put simply, too
many talented young girls mistakenly consider an ICT career to be boring, geeky,
uncreative or a career path that lacks the ‘world-changing’ component many
aspire to.
Working in partnership with lead players in the ICT, education and media
industries, ITU’s new annual Tech Needs Girls Prize aims to dramatically shift
perceptions. The prize targets girls between the ages of 9 to 18 at the very
time when they start forming opinions about their place in the world and their
choice of career path. ITU and its partners will name and tailor a suite of
competitions to different specialist areas, offering girls around the world a
variety of options to get involved, gain confidence in their abilities,
demonstrate their creativity, explore their ‘inner entrepreneur’ and learn
first-hand how ICT can make a real difference.
“Empowering women and girls is a key part of ITU’s mandate of ‘connecting the
world’. I am looking forward enormously to seeing the imaginative submissions
that will come in from girls right around the world, and hope that this new
prize will encourage many of them to consider a future in this most exciting of
industries,” said Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU Secretary-General.
The Tech Needs Girls Prize 2013 will be awarded as part of the annual
Girls in ICT Day
celebrations. ITU is working with leading players including Cisco, Intel
Corporation and the G(irls)20 Summit to inspire girls to take the tech
challenge. Geena Davis, ITU’s own Special Envoy for Girls and ICT, will also be
lending her voice and the important work of her institute to ensure that girls
are better equipped to be leaders and creators in the world of technology. Full
details of the prize, partners and the competitions will be released over the
coming weeks.
The prize forms part of
ITU’s
Tech Needs Girls campaign, launched at Girls in ICT Day this year, which is
leveraging the convening power of ITU to bring players in the ICT, education and
media industries together. This global call to action aims to transform the
wide-ranging number of programmes and organizational initiatives into a force
for movement on the urgent issue of ensuring girls and women play a much more
substantive role in the ICT sector and are better empowered to harness
technology to transform their lives and their futures.
Today also sees the launch of a
mapping tool
allowing all players to publicly pin their events and programmes to the campaign
website. The crowd-sourced map provides a global picture of initiatives and
enables girls and women to quickly locate initiatives available to them locally.
As the United Nations’ specialized agency for ICT, ITU has long championed
the catalytic role ICT can play in empowering women and girls. In 2010, ITU
membership established Girls in ICT Day, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in
April every year and designed to raise visibility on the many exciting
opportunities offered by an ICT career. For
Girls in ICT Day 2012,
over 1,320 events were held in nearly 90 countries, providing an estimated
30,000 young women with a better understanding of the opportunities offered by
the ICT sector.
A multilingual Girls in ICT Portal has
also been launched by ITU to assist girls and young women prepare for and pursue
a technology career. The portal currently houses some 500 programmes, including
over 100 scholarships, 70 contests and awards, more than 100 training and
internship opportunities, over 100 online networks offering career support and
mentoring, as well as tech camps and other activities.
For more information, please contact:
Paul Conneally
Head, Communication and Partnership Promotion
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