The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
celebrates the power of digital literacy to change women’s lives as it reaches
target of ‘one million women trained worldwide’ reports ITRealms.
This year, ITU is commemorating this year’s
International Women’s Day with theme: ‘Progress for all’ through ICTs.
Notable is that over one million disadvantaged
women in 79 countries around the world are now benefiting from newly-acquired
information and communication technology (ICT) skills thanks to a partnership
between ITU, the UN specialized agency for ICTs, and Philippines-based NGO
Telecentre.org Foundation.
ITRealms
also reports that the Women’s Digital Literacy Campaign, launched in 2011 with
a target of training one million women around the world, leveraged the combined
reach of Telecentre.org Foundation’s global network of 100,000 telecentres
worldwide and ITU’s 193 Member States and 700 private sector members.
The campaign reached its goal earlier this month
with a total of 1,014,096 women trained in basic computer skills, through the
efforts of 153 participating organizations and 20,000 telecentres around the
world.
Myrna Padilla spent 20 years living away from her
children earning a living as a domestic worker in Hong Kong.
Now, back home in
the Philippines, she uses her digital literacy skills to run her own graphic
design business employing 20 staff – and all her children are getting a college
education...watch Myrna talk about the power of technology skills to change a
family’s destiny.
Obonyo ‘Molly’ Adhiambo couldn’t afford a college
degree, and knew her options were limited – until a friend told her of a
digital literacy training course being offered by youth-based organization
Nairobits Trust…learn what Molly did with her new computer skills.
Yulia Korneyeva was 23 when she first learned to
use ICTs at a telecentre. But like many young people hit by the economic
crisis, she recently found herself out of work – and realized she lacked the
proficiency to apply for the positions she wanted. Her future changed when she
saw an advertisement for a free course entitled “Advanced Digital Literacy”…
find out how Youlia’s training changed her life…
“The success of this joint campaign meshes
perfectly with this year’s International Women’s Day theme of ‘equality for
women is progress for all’, because training in today’s ICT systems is so often
change that turns around the lives of unskilled and disadvantaged women and
their families,” said ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun I. Touré.
“Having the skills to use ICTs opens up new
horizons and empowers women, both economically and culturally. In addition,
offering digital skills to over one million women at grassroots level is
helping reverse the paradigm whereby, in many countries, ICTs still most often
benefit men more than women.”
Recent research by ITU’s Telecommunication
Development Bureau estimates that there are 200 million fewer women online than
men. Of the world’s 2.8 billion Internet users, 1.3 billion are women, compared
with 1.5 billion men.
While the gap between male and female users is
relatively small in OECD nations, it widens rapidly in poorer countries, where
expensive, ‘high status’ ICTs like computers are often unaffordable for women
at the bottom of the development pyramid. In the developing world overall, 16%
fewer women than men are online, with even greater disparities in some regions;
in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, ITU estimates that there are only half as
many women connected as men.
A report issued last year by the Broadband
Commission for Digital Development’s Working Group on Gender, led by UNDP
Administrator Helen Clark, revealed that, around the world, women are coming
online later and more slowly than men. It also showed that women are on average
21 per cent less likely to own a mobile phone – representing a mobile gender
gap of 300 million, equating to US$13 billion in potential missed revenues for
the mobile sector.
“With technology now widely recognized as a
critical enabler for socio-economic development, the Women’s Digital Literacy
Campaign has been key in reinforcing ITU’s global efforts to promote the
digital inclusion of women in line with Millennium Development Goal 3 on gender
equality,” said Brahima Sanou, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development
Bureau, which initiated and led the Women’s Digital Literacy Campaign.
“Partnership is key in any undertaking, and what
we have achieved so far under the Telecentre Women Digital Literacy Campaign is
a testament to this. I, therefore, take this opportunity to thank ITU and all
our partners in this campaign for accepting the challenge and for embracing
this cause with so much fervour,” said Miguel Raimilla, Executive Director of
Telecentre.org Foundation.
“We may have already reached our target, but the
work doesn’t stop here. There is still so much more to be done out there, and
the programme will definitely continue to empower women worldwide through ICT,
in the hopes of inspiring change and ultimately bringing about the much needed
results,” Raimilla said.
The campaign is just one element of ITU’s work in
the field of gender empowerment through ICTs. Each year on the fourth Thursday
in April, ITU and the global technology community celebrate ‘Girls in ICT Day’,
an international awareness-raising initiative launched by ITU in 2010 to
promote tech careers to a new generation of girls with an interest in science
and maths.
Since its inception in 2010, the day has been
gaining huge momentum around the world, with 2,700 events organized in 121
countries for an outreach of more than 70,000 girls and young women. Event
organizers are gearing up for a big celebration on 24 April this year:
stakeholders are encouraged to contact girlsinict@itu.int to let the ITU team
know their plans.
ITU has also developed a range of digital literacy
training materials designed to be used in school-based community centres and
multi-purpose telecentres by women, indigenous peoples, and persons with
disabilities.
In addition to providing basic ICT literacy, the materials show
trainees how ICTs can be used to support a range of economic activities such as
handicrafts, agro-tourism and agriculture. Training materials can be accessed
here.
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