ITU leads the world in marking International Girls in ICT Day

International Girls in ICT Day was celebrated today around the globe at hundreds of events showcasing the technological skills of girls and young women. The day highlights the value of women in the field of information and communications technology (ICT), and seeks to encourage more girls to plan for a career in this expanding field.

According to the International Telecommunication Union website, this year’s event was a virtual international meetup of girls in Geneva, Vilnius and Beirut through a shared game application and video link. This enabled them to explore ICT together in an interactive format in real-time.

In Geneva, the girls demonstrated new digital skills they learned in activities leading up to Girls in ICT Day and had the opportunity to meet women mentors from the tech sector. In Vilnius, the girls enjoyed a robotics workshop, practical demonstrations of virtual and augmented reality, and witnessed a presentation of winning projects from Lithuania’s biggest annual robotics and technology competition, ROBOTIADA.

“The important value that young women bring to ICTs was showcased today at hundreds of hands-on Girls in ICT Day events organized around the globe,” said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. “ITU hopes that Girls in ICT Day will continue to introduce more girls to ICTs and to the real opportunities that exist for them in this innovative and expanding field.”

Other key events also took place around the world:

In Bangkok, Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society and ITU launched a capacity building program aimed at imparting employable digital skills to more than 100 female university students in 2017, with support from CISCO Systems (Thailand), Microsoft (Thailand), and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

In Brazil, two Girls in ICT Day events were organized by ITU and ANATEL, and attended by a combined 160 young women, encouraging them to pursue university studies in ICT.

In the Caribbean, more than 90 young female coders took part in a regional hackathon event supported by Cotton Tree Consulting and Change Makers Development Ltd.  Throughout the day, young women also engaged in hands-on activities, guided by a tech mentor,that used ICT to create, innovate and generate solutions to various challenges. The activities included mobile app-building, animation, robotics, digital video production and digital artworks, and web development.

In Egypt, ITU together with the German Society for International Cooperation, the International Development Research Centre and the Aga Khan & Continuous Education Center organized an event in Aswan in which girls participated in an ICT training camp, a contest, mentoring sessions and a career fair. The event was designed to provide young women in Aswan with practical insight into the ICT sector and ICT skills that can increase their employability. Eight more similar events are planned between now and 2019, with the goal of reaching a total of 450 girls.

In Ethiopia, ITU, UN Women, UNDP, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and the Africa Union Commission organized a Girls in ICT Day conference, sponsored by Huawei, Ethiopia PLC, which brought together girls from several African countries to explore and share together their ICT experiences.

In Tanzania, the entire month of March 2017 was used to conduct trainings for girls attending public school in six different zones in Tanzania. As part of the training, teams of girls developed the concept for an innovative mobile application and then competed against other teams at the local, regional and national levels. The national winners then represent their peers at the ITU Girls in ICT Day conference held in Ethiopia.

In Russia, a regional seminar on women and girls in ICT was held.  Participants from across the Commonwealth of Independent States region identified plans to ensure year-long action to increase the number of women and girls in ICT.

Since its inception in 2014, over 240,000 girls and young women have taken part in more than 7,200 celebrations of International Girls in ICT Day in 160 countries worldwide.

The annual event is supported by a growing number of governments, community organizations, schools and the business community. In addition to the supporters noted above, Alfa Telecom, the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, and Kaunas University of Technology supported Girls in ICT Day 2017.