BAYWO empowers 60 adolescent girls with leadership, advocacy skills - ITREALMS

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The Abiola-Ariyo Youths and Women (BAYWO) Foundation has successfully concluded a specialized training program for 60 Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) across selected Local Government Areas in Lagos State, reports ITREALMS.

Supported by a coalition including the Gender Equality Fund (GEF), Global Network of Young People Living with HIV, HERVoice Fund, Y+Global, and ANAYD, the initiative focuses on transforming leadership capacity and ensuring young women participate meaningfully in decision-making processes that impact their health and wellbeing.

MainOne aligns with global effort on women in ICT

Gender ICT@ITRealms:

Leading connectivity and data center solutions provider, MainOne, has aligned with the global campaign on girls and young women to deliberately choose careers in the growing information and communications technology (ICT) sector, reports ITRealms.

Marketing Manager, MainOne, Ms Jumoke Akande, made this call at the International Girls in ICT Day hosted by E-Business Life Communications Limited in Lagos, saying that there is currently a gender disparity in ICT jobs, and urged girls as well as women to pursue ICT-related careers in the burgeoning sector.

“We believe that improving the number of girls in ICT careers creates a more balanced and inclusive society. Therefore, it is important that we encourage girls to expand their horizons, to empower and enable them overcome whatever limiting mindsets and fears they might have regarding pursuing careers in ICT,” she said.

Emphasizing that MainOne’s support of initiatives aimed at encouraging technology careers for Nigerian girls aligns with the goal of the company to provide girls of all ages with support, mentorship and the motivation to pursue ICT-driven careers, eventually becoming active role models themselves to the next generation of girls.

“Our CEO, Ms. Opeke, is an ITU female role model and believes this cycle is necessary to create better opportunities for our girls and reverse the gender imbalance in technology,” Akande said.

The Chief Executive Officer, eBusiness Life Communications, Ufuoma Emuophedaro commended MainOne for its efforts in expediting digital literacy and called on other stakeholders to join hands to further invest in girls and young women by supporting the Girls in ICT campaign in addition to empowering them by offering them the confidence to pursue ICT studies and careers.

ITRealms recalls that the Girls in ICT Day, celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday in April, is an awareness-raising initiative designed to promote studies and careers in technology to a new generation of girls and young women with an interest in becoming ICT enthusiasts.

The theme for this year’s celebration was "Expanding Horizons and Changing Attitudes" and it was sponsored by MainOne along with other organizations and individuals. The event was attended by the representative of the Minister of Communications, representatives from IT companies and other industry stakeholders.

Nkemdilim Nweke/GEE

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Nigerian Team Charis shines @ Technovation 2015, wins $10,000

ITRealms:

Young women from Nigeria and India are celebrating their entrepreneurial success after being awarded $10,000 each in seed funding for their mobile app ideas at the 2015 Technovation World Pitch Competition recently in San Francisco, United States of America (USA), reports ITRealms.

Investigations by ITRealms, showed that estimated 400 apps were submitted to Technovation from 28 countries.

These 400 apps, ITRealms gathered were narrowed down to top 10 finalists from Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria and the United States, whose teams were flown into San Francisco for a series of events which culminated in the two day World Pitch Conference.

According to Events and Engagement Director, Technovation, Allie Holmes, on June 24, all teams pitched their apps to an audience of tech professionals and a panel of judges from Yahoo, Yelp, Google, Hackbright Academy and the Salesforce.com Foundation, and on June 25 learned with two teams awarded $10,000 each to develop their app and bring it to market.

“This year, the first place awards went to Team Charis from Nigeria (High School Division) and Team Pentechan from India (Middle School Division),” Holmes said.

ITRealms further showed that High School Winners, which is Nigerian Team Charis took first place in the high school division for their app “Discardious,” a mobile solution to the problem of improper waste disposal in Nigeria.

Team Charis’ members are Nmesoma Ogbonna, Sonam Kumar, Charlotte Takem, Praise Emem David-Oku, and Grace Akpoiroro, all of whom attend iKapture Afterschool Academy. They were mentored and coached by Yemurayi Chinyand and Grace Ihejiamaizu.

Also, the second place was awarded to Team WoCo, a team from Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, for their app PraisePop. Team AMEKA from Winchester, MA took third place for their app Safeguard Driving.

For the Middle School Winners, which Team Pentechan from India emerged first place for their app “Sellexo”, an online marketplace for users to buy and sell dry waste.

Team Pentechan’s members are:  Anupama Nhavalore, Navyasree Balamuralidhar, Sanjana Vasanth, Mahima Mehendale, and Swasthi P Rao all of whom attend New Horizon Public School in Bangalore, India. Team Pentechan was mentored and coached by Pratheeksha K. S., Dipika Rajendran, and Aravamudhan Narayanan

Team AAT from New York City took the second place prize in the middle school division for their app ConcussionChecker.

The two first place teams will receive $10,000 in seed funding to continue developing their app and bring it to market when they return home.

All World Pitch events were sponsored by AVG, CA Technologies, LinkedIn, Rackspace and Yahoo. 

+ITRealms DSA +Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) 

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Nigerian launches global women mentoring project

ITrealms: 

In a bid to help young women harness their potentials and achieve their set goals, London based Nigerian Information Technology professional, Ms Adanna Ononiwu, has launched a global mentoring project for young girls and women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), ITRealms authoritatively gathered.

The project tagged InspireIT, in a statement made available to journalists recently, is a free online project aimed at empowering young girls and women to enable them choose their careers properly and achieve their career goals

“The project is aimed at young girls and women. It’s a program where experts in STEM can mentor these women to enable them harness their potentials. It will be mostly done via online (emails and skype)”, the Information Technology graduate of Anglia Ruskin University – Chelmsford, London and Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Nigeria said.  

According to Ononiwu, the project will give young girls and women the opportunity to participate in an online mentoring programme that will guide them to achieve their target goals.

“This is a new project recently launched this month and it is aimed at encouraging our young girls and women in STEM. Through this project, they will be able to have one on one interaction with their mentors mostly online and ask questions about their subject areas as it relates to the ‘real world’.

“If most young girls and women in STEM are mentored, I believe they will be able to choose their careers properly and achieve their career goals,” Adanna said.

The InspireIT mentors are professionals drawn from a variety of fields of STEM from different countries across the globe.

ITRealms gathered that the STEM online mentoring project is run by Nuecla Services, an IT consulting agency affiliated to Nuecla Services Limited UK.

Ms Ononiwu, who is a blogger, took to her blog to announce the kick off of the project thus:

“Hi All,

I have officially started my free mentoring project titled 'InspireIT' for young girls and women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) for interested girls and women”.

Already, online forms have been created for intending mentors and mentees to fill and participate in the project.

For young girls who wish to join the mentoring programme, the link, she said is: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hu8AyqZfWeq5pK_g793Pb1V5Cn-tPSCnYwFa4y7ja_8/viewform while for professionals who wish to be mentors can register online using the link:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OFFl7xRXIEcQ6IRxNMJqQxwuLK7QvoyxQptzUhQo9Ns/viewform.

Chukwudi Obi

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