Archived Newsroom • Press Release |
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International ‘Girls in ICT Day’ celebrated around the
globe
Annual day promotes career opportunities for young women to become ICT
creators
Geneva, 28 April 2014 – Every year on the fourth Thursday in
April, ITU and the global technology community celebrate ‘Girls in ICT Day’, an
awareness-raising initiative designed to promote tech careers and studies to a
new generation of girls and young women with an interest in becoming ICT
creators.
ITU salutes the hundreds of organizers and thousands of girls and young women
taking part in this global movement, including ITU Member States and private
sector members, and schools, universities and NGOs around the world who
celebrated International Girls in ICT Day 2014.
ITU Member States, including Azerbaijan, Brazil, Colombia, Gambia, Guatemala,
Indonesia, Lebanon, Nepal, Nigeria, Senegal, Serbia, Venezuela and Zambia, along
with ITU Sector Members Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, Microsoft, GSMA, and
Telecentre.org, and NGOs from every region of the world are among the organizers
that have already reached out to girls and young women worldwide this year.
International ‘Girls in ICT Day’ has rapidly grown into a global movement,
with thousands of events organized in over 140 countries since its inception in
2010. Facebook posts, tweets and emails continue to pour into ITU highlighting
the many exciting events being held in 2014. ITU is posting information about
all the events around the world on its
Girls in ICT Portal. The international day has also inspired
year-long actions and advocacy to encourage girls and women to prepare for and
take up ICT careers.
Girls in ICT Day celebrations began last week, with an
event for local school girls at ITU Headquarters, along
with numerous events organized in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Tunisia
by ITU Sector Member Cisco together with the ITU Regional Office for the Arab
States.
“ICTs are improving the lives of people everywhere, through better
healthcare, better education, better environmental management, better
communications and better governance,” said ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun I.
Touré in welcoming the Geneva schoolgirls on April 15. He encouraged them, and
girls around the world, to “pursue smart careers – careers where you make the
very best of technology to help improve the lives of others”.
In the Americas region the Technology University of Chile (INACAP), the
National University of Rosario, Argentina, and the Caribbean telecommunication
organization CARICOM in Guyana were among the organizers of events for young
women. The US Federal Communications Commission organized a Twitter chat to
celebrate the day with participation from FCC Commissioners. The US National
Center for Women and Information Technology will launch an International Women’s
Hackathon this weekend as part of its own Girls in ICT Day celebrations.
Germany got an early start with their 14th annual “Girls’ Day” on 27 March to
give girls the opportunity to take part in technical and natural science
activities, including some 500 ICT-oriented events for 6,000 interested girls
organized with Deutsche Telekom, and Cisco, Intel, IBM, SAP and Microsoft, while
Lithuania is sponsoring an event this weekend.
All ITU Regional Offices also actively promoted Girls in ICT Day 2014,
organizing events, partnering with other UN agencies, supporting organizers in
their respective regions and hosting competitions.
“I am delighted that the global Girls in ICT Day movement has now inspired
stakeholders to implement year-long programmes to equip girls and young women
with the skills they need to become ICT creators“, said Brahima Sanou, Director
of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. Mr. Sanou applauded the
Nigerian Federal Ministry of Communication Technology, Turkcell and Dublin City
University for their inspiring initiatives. MCT Nigeria recently launched
Digital Girls Clubs in schools across the country to train girls in skills like
ICT games, application development, website development and computer
programming. Turkcell’s ‘Snowdrops’ project provides STEM scholarships for young
women who also take software development training and participated in the first
Mobile App Marathon held in Turkey. Dublin City University launched
CoderDoJoGirls, which just celebrated its first anniversary, teaching girls to
code and build their confidence.
ITU estimates a skills shortfall of over 2 million ICT jobs in the coming
years. Girls and young women who learn coding, apps development and
computer science will be well-placed to enter a career in ICTs, leading to their
economic empowerment. “Empowering girls and young women to fulfil their
potential through ICTs will benefit not only young women and girls themselves,
but entire societies and their economies,” Brahima Sanou said in his annual
Girls in ICT message.
Contact girlsinict@itu.int
to tell us about your exciting Girls in ICT Day celebrations so we can share you
event, pictures and videos on the ITU
Girls in ICT Portal.
Follow the discussion around the event on Twitter #GirlsinICT and Facebook at
the ITU Girls in ICT Day 2014 event page
https://www.facebook.com/events/261028464066900/
View Girls in ICT Day video messages from
ITU
Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré and
Director of ITU
Telecommunication Development Bureau Brahima Sanou.
For more information, please contact:
Sarah Parkes
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information
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Monica Albertini,
Communication Officer, BDT
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