Support to 20 SMART girls in rural areas of Bosnia

The Center for the Promotion of Civil Society (CPCD) had an outright active start of the year with two educational events which endorsed the idea of an active participation of girls in careers related to Information and Communication Technologies.

The first event was a closing ceremony of a rather successful Hour of Code 2019, organized on January 25^th 2020 and it gathered elementary and high school students from across Bosnia and Herzegovina. What CPCD team insisted on was that the schools choose an equal proportion of girls and boys who will take part in the final educational course and a competition in programming. The motto of this educational event was “Learn computer science, change the world” which is hopefully the message we succeeded in getting across to all of the participants, especially the girls who took part in the event.

The next event took place on March 9^th – an educational Girls in ICT workshop we organized for more than 90 girls from the Sarajevo Canton and the Sarajevo-Romanija region aged 13 to 17. This workshop was a one-day event in which girls got a chance to talk to and learn from highly skilled professionals in the field – such as Anela Huskovic, Microsoft’s Area Solution Architect, Lejla Hadziabdic, Senior Partner Development Manager at Microsoft CEE, CEO of a local company App Impact – Admir Tuzovic, and a member of eduIT Professors’ and Teachers’ Association in Bosnia and Herzegovina – Adin Begic.

The girls had a chance to learn both theoretically and get a hands-on experience in various disciplines related to Information and Communication Technologies, namely web pages’ development with HTML/CSS/JavaScript, Artificial Intelligence, coding with MicroBits, and to hear motivational speeches by women in this field on how to reach success in ICT regardless of the background, situation, and general understanding of women in the sector.

The goal of both of these educational activities, particularly the latter, was to inspire girls to take up careers in ICT, with no distress or thinking that there is no one to support them in their ideas. Also, through these workshops, there is a significant destruction of stereotypes which are widely present in our society regarding women in IT. We tried to reassure them in their plans to participate in the society with their innovative ideas, talent, and knowledge of this and related fields.

CPCD is immensely focused on improving the status and education of youth, especially girls, in information technologies, and as the directress of CPCD - Aida Daguda - said in her opening speech at the Girls in ICT workshop, which was held a day after the International Women’s Day, “the biggest gift we can give women and girls is education”.

After the events, one of the participants – a girl attending a high school in Istocno Sarajevo, with a focus on ICT who says that in her class there are 22 boys and 4 girls – said that she finally feels as if she will change the inferiority of women in ICT in Bosnia and Herzegovina, because her love for ICT will make her persist in making a career in this field.  

These were undeniably two great events, thank you again for your support!

Girls from remote communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina will be active participants in the Hour of Code, the largest learning event in history! The Hour of Code started as a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify "code", to show that anybody can learn the basics, and to broaden participation in the field of computer science. It has since become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science, starting with 1-hour coding activities but expanding to all sorts of community efforts. Our organization is accredited representative of the Hour of Code in our country, and we will organize the Hour of Code for more than 100 young people, where girls will be able to participate to different sessions during the week, but one of the sessions will be dedicated strictly to 20 of them.

The goal of the Hour of Code is not to teach anybody to become an expert computer scientist in one hour. One hour is only enough to learn that computer science is fun and creative, that it is accessible at all ages, for all students, regardless of background. The measure of success of this campaign is not in how much CS students learn - the success is reflected in broad participation across gender and ethnic and socioeconomic groups, and the resulting increase in enrollment and participation we see in CS courses at all grade levels. Millions of the participating teachers and students have decided to go beyond one hour - to learn for a whole day or a whole week or longer, and many students have decided to enroll in a whole course (or even a college major) as a result.

Besides the students, another "learner" is the educator who gains the confidence after one hour that they can teach computer science even though they may not have a college degree as a computer scientist. Tens of thousands of teachers decide to pursue computer science further, either attending PD or offering follow-on online courses, or both. And this applies to school administrators too, who realize that computer science is something their students want and their teachers are capable of.

Above all, what all participants can learn in an hour is that we can do this.

The Hour of Code takes place each year during Computer Science Education Week. The 2019 Computer Science Education Week will be December 9-15, 2019.