Ho-Ghana, March 13, GNA – The Volta Regional Directorate of the Department of Gender in partnership with Genius IT Foundation and Project Management Institute has provided a four-week intensive training for 46 girls and 11 women in digital literacy skills.
The girls were from first and second cycle schools including, E.P.C Mawuko Girls Senior High School, OLA Senior High School, Kabore School Complex, Holy Spirit Catholic Preparatory School, and Nuriya Basic School while the women were drawn from auto sprayers, hairdressers, among others.
The beneficiaries were taken through basic knowledge in coding, web designs, graphic designs, office suit productivity applications and digital marketing, and project management in Information Communication Technology (ICT).
Presenting a certificate to the beneficiaries at this year’s International Women’s Day celebration, Mrs Thywill Eyra Kpe, Volta Regional Director, Department of Gender, said it was important to build capacity of girls and women in digital literacy.
The Department, under the auspices of the Volta Regional Coordinating Council in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), STAR-Ghana Foundation and Actionaid organised a “Tech Forum and Fair” as part of activities to commemorate this year’s International Women’s Day.
Mrs Kpe, speaking to Ghana News Agency (GNA), said, equipping girls and women with the requisite skills and knowledge in digital literacy was a ladder made available to them to climb and compete favourably in the digital world.
Mrs Kpe underscored the need for conscious efforts to institute measures to create avenues for constant skill development for girls in ICT for gender equality and to protect their future.
She implored the beneficiaries to put the skills and knowledge they have acquired to good use and urged them to remain focused on their studies, avoid engaging in unproductive activities so they could achieve their dreams to the fullest.
“Many young people have lost out on their bright future just because of one moment of wrong decision,” she said, and urged the girls to be patient in life as the set of values, actions, and priorities they set today would help shape their future.
Mrs Awo Aidam Amenya, Executive Director, Child Online Africa, said women and girls were very critical when it comes cyber security, however, only few women had ventured into cyber security.
She said cyber security was not a preserve of men and that there were career opportunities in that field that women and girls could pick up including governance, risk, compliance, and auditing.
The cyber security expert lamented that in the whole of Africa according to the World Bank report, only nine per cent of women involved in cyber security, which she said was not encouraging and urged women and girls to take up the profession.
She told the GNA that there was the need to remove all barriers that discouraged girls from venturing into STEM and to demystify the notion that cyber security was for men.
Mrs Amenya urged government to put in place deliberate policies that would create a conducive environment for women and girls to pursue STEM courses.
Some of the beneficiaries who spoke to the GNA, thanked the Department of Gender and its partners for the training and pledged to put the skills they acquired to good use.
