Girls' Computer Literacy & Leadership Program

Translated from the French, from FAVL program manager Boué Alidou

The multimedia center of Houndé (CMH), in the interest of multiplying its activities to the benefit of the populations, held for the second time a training in use of computers. This second training was held for young women coming from the villages of Sara, Dohoun, Karaba and Houndé. Two tutors from the first training were there also. The participants received a lot of practical knowledge on the computer namely: "How to turn on, turn off, put in sleep and restart a computer, the role of the buttons of the keyboard". Participants touched each button to see the feature. The role of the right and left buttons of the mouse. Exercises for entering sentences and paragraphs of texts taken from CMH books. The women practiced typing and also how to select a word, a sentence and a text; change the size and font, save and save a version. They also learned how to create a folder and copy and paste. These activities were conducted under the guidance of the tutors who worked tirelessly to support the participants. We observed a good concentration of the participants during these two days of work at the end of which they also wrote a book by entering the text on the computer. The book is titled The lack of civility in schools. It will be corrected and printed for the benefit of the readers.

But compared to the first formation, we can note that the second one knew some divergences in particular:

• Increase in the number of computers in the center. The FAVL Ouaga staff dispatched two computers for reinforcement. This made the job much easier and allowed all the participants to become familiar with the computer.
• The participation of the tutors during the training was good
• The level of participants was slightly below the first. A lot of emphasis has been put on the typing of words in Word software.
• A first time to touch the computer buttons for half of the girls. Which led us to concentrate on many typing exercises.
• We also promoted reading during the training. Each participant took a CMH book during her break to read a few paragraphs.

The training ended on Saturday, July 20, 2019. The participants received the advice of the staff to seize the opportunity when the time comes to deepen their knowledge of computers. It was a pleasure to have allowed these young people to achieve a good performance on the introduction to the computer in a spirit of sharing and camaraderie.