Archived Newsroom • Press Release |
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International ‘Girls in ICT Day’ celebrated around the globe
Annual day promotes technology career opportunities for young women
in the world’s fastest-growing sector
Geneva, 28 April 2016 – Every year on the fourth Thursday in
April, ITU and the global technology community celebrate International ‘Girls in
ICT Day’, an awareness-raising initiative designed to promote tech studies and
careers to a new generation of girls and young women.
ITU estimates a skills shortfall of over two million jobs in the information
and communication technology (ICT) sector within the next five years. Girls and
young women who learn coding, apps development and computer science will not
only be well-placed for a successful career in the ICT sector, but ICT skills
are rapidly becoming a strong advantage for students in just about any other
field they might choose to pursue.
By 2015, annual Girls in ICT Day events had reached an estimated 177,000
girls around the world through over 5,300 events in more than 150 countries, and
ITU is expecting these numbers to increase in the 2016 celebration. ITU
congratulates the hundreds of organizers and thousands of girls and young women
who are now part of this global movement, including ITU Member States and
private sector members, ITU academia members, and other schools, universities
and NGOs around the world.
Hundreds of events are taking place today around the world, organized by ITU
Member States, ITU Sector Members including Cisco, Ericsson, GSMA, Microsoft and
Oracle, universities such as the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain),
Higher Colleges of Technologies (UAE), the Universidad Nacional de La Plata
(Argentina) and the Universidad Tecnológica de Chile, and local NGOs from every
region.
The event continues to gain momentum on social channels, with Facebook posts
and tweets using #girlsinICT proving an increasingly popular way of highlighting
the many exciting events being held in 2016.
ITU is gathering and posting information about events around the world on its
Girls in ICT Portal –
organizers are encouraged to send information, photos and videos to
girlsinict@itu.int.
As always, ITU Regional Offices around the world also actively promoted Girls
in ICT Day 2016, organizing events, partnering with other UN agencies,
supporting organizers in their respective regions and hosting competitions.
ITU’s Geneva headquarters Girls in ICT Day 2016 celebrations began earlier
this month with a series of tech workshops for girls aged 14-17 involving five
schools in the Geneva area – the British School of Geneva; the Collège-Lycée
International, Ferney-Voltaire; the Institut Florimont; and the International
School of Geneva (La Châtaigneraie and Nations campuses), complemented by a free
half-day Raspberry Pi coding class open to all Geneva-area girls held at the
University of Geneva’s Uni Mail campus. Partner organizations included TechSpark
Academy (Scratch coding), FutureKids and Expanding Your Horizons (Raspberry Pi),
UNITAR/UNOSAT (3D satellite mapping), Seedspace, and Proctor & Gamble. The 2016
event was generously sponsored by the Novartis Foundation, with support from the
US Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva.
Watch a video of the workshops in schools around Geneva.
Celebrations culminated at a fun event at ITU headquarters today bringing
together workshop participants, teachers and high-level representatives from the
Geneva diplomatic community for a morning comprising an online tech quiz, speed
mentoring sessions, and school showcases demonstrating what students had learned
and achieved during their workshop sessions. Keynote speakers included ITU
Deputy Secretary-General Malcolm Johnson, US Ambassador Pamela Hamamoto, Head of
the Novartis Foundation, Dr Ann Aerts, and Daniel Auger, head of Computer
Science at the International School of Geneva.
View the
archived webcast of the event.
“Girls in ICT Day reminds us that ICTs help to improve the lives of people
everywhere – through better health care, better environmental management, better
communications, and better educational systems that transform the way children
and adults learn,” said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. “ICT professionals
work on some of the most exciting projects imaginable. With the global
technology sector continuing to expand rapidly, there is a predicted global
shortfall of two million technology sector jobs that need qualified people to
fill them. That means girls with ICT skills can expect to earn good salaries and
enjoy plenty of career opportunities.”
“Girls in ICT Day is inspiring ITU members from both government and the
private sector to find ways to equip girls and young women with the skills they
need to become ICT professionals,” said Brahima Sanou, Director of ITU’s
Telecommunication Development Bureau, which leads the global Girls in ICT Day
campaign. “Empowering girls to choose a career in ICTs is not just good for
girls and their families, it can be a major accelerator of socio-economic
development at the national level.”
Contact the team at
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 2016 event page.
View
Girls in ICT Day video messages from ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao,
and watch video interviews with
Girls in ICT role models (all UN languages).
For more information, please contact:
Sarah Parkes
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information, ITU
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Monica Albertini
Communication Officer,
BDT
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