Inspire Girls

Overview

Around the world, girls are less likely to finish school, less likely to pursue higher education, and thus less likely to follow career paths that lead to higher-paying, specialized jobs dependent on technology.

Goals

Through engaging teachers and students from African countries where we have Field Associates, WCE is able to provide resources to help teachers in developing countries to inspire girls to pursue careers in technology. By doing so, we hope to achieve the following:

• Empower girls to stay in school
• Inspire girls to pursue career roles as leaders and innovators
• Help girls become role models to other girls

Our Work

WCE is growing this program in six African countries (Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Rwanda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). Several teachers and groups of their students are developing a resource (a curriculum unit, a digital game, a video, or a club) for African teachers to use in order to inspire their female students to pursue careers in technology. Each project is assisted by a local WCE Field Associate and by a businesswoman mentor. 

Future Plans

Jane Peters of Sierra Leone and Lindiwe Pilime of Zimbabwe are guiding the development of a grant proposal. Sylvia Swinson and Gwendolyn Collins in the USA are working with them as developers. Our plan is that within 5 years, we will share these resources through our network and on the computers we ship to impact 5,000 teachers and half a million girls in developing countries. In addition, we hope that the teacher resources developed in this initiative will strengthen WCE’s services in refurbished computers, capacity building, and educational content for our Partners in 78 developing countries.

As soon as this proposal is drafted it will be reviewed by our Consortium chaired by Julie Schniewind.

Importance

Wondering why the Inspire Girls project is so important? Listen to Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau at ITU, explain why we need to support girls in tech now more than ever.

Support

If you are interested in supporting our Inspire Girls project through a monetary donation, please make your donation below:

If you have any other questions or concerns about Inspire Girls, please contact InspireGirls@WorldComputerExchange.org.

Resources

For more information about our Inspire Girls project, please refer to the following documents: