A blog post on International Girls in ICT Day
April 27, 2023 – A key part of WPDI’s mandate for promoting sustainable peace and development is to encourage the personal development of people from underprivileged groups, not just because they are victimized or ostracized, but also because they are often held back from reaching their full potential. One of the most important groups to consider in this sense is that of young women and young girls in marginalized, underprivileged communities.
We often note that adult women from these communities suffer from many forms of social discrimination and economic prejudice all without realizing that, in many cases, they were never given any real opportunities for personal expression, creativity and autonomy. Learning how to deploy personal expression is complicated if individuals have not been taught how to do so effectively.
Creating conditions for such education and training calls for multilateral efforts, including ICT training, which we see as indispensable in a world where communication and technology have become integral to the economic, social and cultural fabric of our societies. This is one of the areas where WPDI has turned our efforts, through ICT training programs that help young women improve their digital skills have become an integral part of our global approach to peacebuilding.
Such programs are much needed in many countries and communities, where women are constrained by cultural and patriarchal norms, which prevent them from receiving the full benefits of education or from accessing different technologies. Such a capacity gap is how tradition will often succeed in preventing women from participating in innovation and the development of modern societies.
Listen to Nandengo Kate, from Uganda, telling us about how WPDI’s efforts to improve ICT literacy have opened up opportunities for her future:
Developing digital literacy is a key to liberating the potential of young women and girls. This is one of the frontiers of social justice today. According to a UNICEF report into the gender digital divide, “Gender inequality in the physical world is replicated in the digital world. There is a large gap in women and girls’ digital adoption and use compared to men and boys.” Considerable efforts are being made around the globe to close the gender digital divide, but most of these are focused on digital literacy for adult women. Young girls and adolescents are often unable to access transformative programs focused on ICT training, which contributes to maintaining the gap with regards to the gender digital divide.
As a response to this problem, WPDI runs ICT courses targeting young girls and boys in order to help even out the playing field. These include the course we ran in the Karamoja Sub-Region, Uganda, in the first quarter of 2023, or the ICT training program we ran at our Community Learning Center in the Cape Flats, South Africa, at the beginning of the year.
“Computer training has really impacted the learners in a positive way. It has given them exposure to how to use a computer as many of them have never used one before. Computer training was something that they really looked forward to and they were excited to attend because they told me that they love Miss Steff [WPDI trainer] and that she is a very good teacher. The learners have gained confidence and competence in using a computer and would often tell me what their lessons entailed,” said Ms. Rushda Adams, Grade 3 teacher at Cypress Primary school, South Africa, which participated in our ICT literacy initiative.
ICT is and will remain at the core of WPDI’s global approach to peacebuilding. Empowering young women through vocational training helps turn them into active changemakers in their communities, giving them access to a wealth of information and material to help them develop into drivers of societal change. There are currently over 200 trainees taking part in WPDI ICT courses in Uganda alone, and throughout 2023 we will be expanding our initiatives in the countries where we operate in order to help young girls reach their full potential both online and in the real world.