Now On! The 5th W.TEC Girls Technology Camp

What a long way W.TEC has come.....

On Friday, we received our latest batch of girls for this year's Technology Camp.

The W.TEC Girls Technology Camp is an initiative aimed at helping secondary school students develop technology literacy skills and gain an awareness of career options related to technology, science and engineering. The long-term goal is to increase the numbers of women working with and using information technology productively for professional and leadership activities.

During the camp, the girls participate in technology workshops and leadership activities. Evaluations of previous camps show enhanced leadership skills; creativity; and problem-solving and communication abilities in the girls as a result of attending the camp.

The camp's uniqueness lies in it's girls-only design. The camp is also a residential programme and for the 2-week duration of the camp, 30 girls live and learn about the exciting opportunities that information technology presents for learning, working and living in the 21st century.

Stay tuned for updates from the camp and check out photographs from last year's camp.

GenderIT.org CSW Newsletter: Can Technology Transform Women's Reality?

As the next United Nation's annual Commission on the Status of Women starts on February 22, the gender and ICT website genderIT.org releases its special CSW newsletter.

This GenderIT.org's special CSW edition brings together some of the work that
the Association for Progressive Communications is doing on these issues - including the latest recommendations on science and technology from the experiences of women and girls on the ground, how girls in the Congo are using SMS to stop teacher abuse and if are Simputers in rural women´s hands are empowering or generating e-waste.

The 55th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will be held in New York from 22nd February to 4 March 2011. The theme for this year's session is Access and participation of women and girls in education, training, science and technology, including for the promotion of women's equal access to full employment and decent work.

Apply: Davis Scholars Program (U.S.) for JSS 3 - SSS 1 students

The Emma Willard School for girls in the United States and the Shelby Cullom Davis family have established a program to attract highly motivated, potential future leaders.

For the 2011-2012 year, the Davis family has arranged to provide two $20,000 scholarships to qualified international candidates. Grants are needs based and, if a student qualifies, she may be eligible for financial assistance up to an additional $25,000. Students may be enrolled in the 10th and 11th grades (equivalent to SSS 1 and SSS 2).

Upon graduation from Emma Willard School, Davis Scholars are eligible for continued scholarship support at any of the 89 Davis United World Scholars colleges and universities in the United States.

Emma Willard is one of the U.S' preeminent girls' schools, grades 9-12 (JSS 3 - SSS 3), fostering in each young woman a love of learning, the habits of an intellectual life, and the character, moral strength, and qualities of leadership to serve and shape her world.

Find out more about the Emma Willard School: www.emmawillard.org. Contact Jeffrey Pilgrim, the director of admissions (jpilgrim@emmawillard.org) for more information.

Girls & Technology Links

Two women & technology links:

Technology lifts status for many African women: www.computerworldnigeria.com/articles/2010/03/17/technology-lifts-status-many-african-women

This article by Rebecca Wanjiku explores the new work and economic opportunities that information technology has opened up for African women.

Girls Investigate: From Face to Facebook: womensmediacenter.com/blog/2010/03/girls-investigate-social-medias-merits-minuses



This short video produced by Nadia Tareen for Girls Learn International, speaks to teenage North American girls about their social media usage patterns and how it's influenced their lives. The girls talk about social media's potential for activism and offering new ways to stay in touch with their friends. On the other hand, they also share their fears about cyber bullying, protecting themselves adequately in their online interactions and the biggest of all drawbacks - time wasting.

The Hope for Girls Project: Empowering Girls Through Basketball

Have I mentioned that Today on STV is one way in which I find out about things happening around town?

Well, on this morning's show a young lady and an older gentleman (shame, I can't remember their names now) were interviewed about an initiative, which they coordinate called the Hope for Girls Project. HFGP seeks to mentor and empower young women using basketball. This is about the second such project I have heard of in Nigeria using sports to reach out to young people (I heard about the first also on Today on STV, but that was focused on boys, if I remember correctly).

The very first time I heard about using sports to educate, empower and mentor young women was in Nairobi last year with the Binti Initiative, which brought young women together to play football matches, and afterwards shared with them information on sexual and reproductive health.

Back to the HFGP interview, the young lady called Bola used to play for the First Bank women's basketball team. She now works as a financial analyst for ESPN in the US, but is still involved with HFGP. This year they will hold their first basketball and empowerment camp for young women between 11 and 19 (I think!).

I was very impressed with the way she spoke about the need to impress on young Nigerian women of their worth, especially in a society that does not frequently appreciate them and where their value tends to stem from external factors like family, marriage and children.

Ireti Doyle countered that very often how we are treated is a direct result of how we carry ourselves and that perhaps Nigerian sportswomen weren't demanding for their rights. Bola responded that typically female athletes aren't in a position to demand for *anything* and this is even more so in Nigeria with its unequal treatment of men and women (And this is on top of the general lack of support for sports that affects both sexes).

More for information about the Hope for Girls Project, email hopeforgirls.ng@gmail.com or get in touch with Today at STV.

Update: A link found for this project, http://sportforchange.changemakers.net/node/16603

W.TEC’s Girls’ Technology Camp

The Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC) is now accepting nominations for its upcoming W.TEC Girls’ Technology Camp.
The 1-week residential camp, which will take place in Lagos in August 2008, is aimed at bridging the technology gap between boys and girls earlier in their career path. The camp is designed to encourage young women to choose a career path in information and communication technology (ICT) or to develop more interest in using and/or managing ICTs.

Objectives:
The primary aims of this camp are to:

1. Introduce young Nigerian women to a variety of computer applications and other ICTs, which they can use productively for leisure, school and work, and help develop their skills in using them
2. Encourage the young women to consider a technology career, by giving a realistic and positive idea of computing-related careers through career talks and career-themed films
3. Help the young women plan their future careers with the assistance of mentors and women currently working in these fields

The programme is targeted at female students who are:

• Currently in JSS 2 to SSS 2 and no younger than 11 years of age
• Interested in computers and other ICTs
• Considering a career in a computing-related field or one in which computers will be used frequently

Application:
Nominations should be sent to info@w-teconline.org, with the following information: First and Last Names; Class; Age; School; Contact Address; Phone Number; and Email Address.

Alternatively, visit the W.TEC website to read more and apply.

Anatomy of a Woman

I went to see the play Anatomy of a Woman by Wole Oguntokun. I wasn't sure what to expect, because my friend who invited me didn't tell me what it was about.

Lord! A play by a man who thinks he knows what women want, I thought.

Well, as it turned out, Wole Oguntokun does believe he knows what women want. He writes a column in the arts supplement of the Sunday Guardian called The Girl Whisperer. So, does he?

According to the play, women want to be whatever they choose to be! I liked that. Yes, I truly want to be whatever I choose to be.

But sometimes being all that you choose to be can drive you 'round the bend and to the point of exhaution. This is something that I am acutely aware of at the moment. So, it was with keen interest that I read the New York Times article For Girls, It's Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too.

The article examines the lives of young women today (specifically in a high school in Newton, MA in the US near where I used to work) who have choices that women in previous generations didn't have, and so they really can try to do it all. However, trying to be the straight A student, athelete, community activist, good daughter, sister, friend and girlfriend at the same time is an incredibly tough task. These are "do-everything" girls.

They get receive many, and often conflicting, messages from society:
1. Bring home A’s. Do everything. Get into a top college.
2. Be yourself. Have fun. Don’t work too hard.

Fun? How do you fit in fun when you have a ton of other things to do and mountains to climb? I know I talk a lot about this apsect of women's lives a lot, but it's interesting to read something about a younger set of women and see how the pressure starts early - granted this article looks at a group of young women living in a well-to-do surburb in a developed country. While they have many opportunties to pick and choose from, they also don't have to contend with many of the issues that many young women in less affluent countries have to e.g. having their basic needs of food and shelter met, lack of water, no electicity, poor educational system, etc.

Anyway, as tough and hectic as life gets sometimes, I am so happy that I am a woman living in these times and not in any period before. I am enjoying freedoms won by hundreds of fierce, intelligent women who came before me. And I am thoroughly grateful to them for it. I may groan sometimes about having too much to do and not enough time to do it all in (a very valid concern, btw, which I'm trying to address by prioritising, taking on less things and better time management), but I would so much rather feel that I was a woman achieving - or trying to achieve - her full potential than one who, in the words of one of the young women in the article, is "a bystander in my life."