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‘Girls Go IT’ Nigeria, a social development platform intent on empowering girls from rural and under-served communities to acquire digital and information technology skills has concluded its first summer boot camp which took place in Mushin, Lagos from August to October 2016.
At the end of the 12-week programme, the participating 10 girls from Community Secondary School and Itire Community Senior Secondary school were able to learn the know-how Web app development and eventually built & design a website for their schools, while they will further train their mates who were not part of the programme the basic of coding. They also developed their entrepreneurship skills during the boot camp.
Speaking on the initiative, Programme Manager of ‘Girl GO IT’ Nigeria, Mr. Kunle Afolayan said, “We very excited at what the girls have been able to achieve during the summer boot camp. Compelling how this girls from a rural district in Lagos managed to learn how script a simple web app from the point where they never had the opportunity to use a computer before.
It just goes to show that with the right exposure, the Nigerian girl can measure up with her peers from around the world in all endeavors. The fact that they will be teaching their schoolmates some of the skills they’ve learnt here means that a lot more girls will be aware of the possibilities available to them.”
Project Lead, Mr. Abayomi Ogundipe, said, “The importance of Digital and information technology in development cannot be over-emphasised as we continue to see its impact in the life of young people. We have seen how technology has empowered young people to change the world through platforms like Facebook, Google and Jobberman here in Nigeria. We believe Nigerians have got what it takes to develop the next big thing in technology and we will be actively creating the opportunities for girls to get into technology.”
Commenting the programme, one of the participants from Itire Community Senior Secondary, Deborah Adelabu said, “The summer boot camp has impacted my life positively. From being a student who was just looking to go through secondary school and the university and get a job afterwards I’m now beginning to see the great opportunities that lies ahead of me. I do not have to look for a job but I can create one for myself and I don’t have to wait until I graduate but I can start now. These are things that I wasn’t even aware of until I came for the GirlsGoIT boot camp.”
GirlsGoIT was founded in Moldova with the vision of boosting the entrepreneurship and innovation capacity of women and girls by empowering them to acquire digital and IT Skills. The organisation plans to increase the number of Nigerian participants in its training by covering more rural areas of the country as the programme unfolds.
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