Support to 20 SMART girls in rural areas of Bosnia

 The Centre for Civil Society Promotion (CCSP) continuously provides support for activities directed at engaging girls from Bosnia and Herzegovina in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

As the end of the year approaches, it is a great time to reminisce all of the activities we have conducted with the goal of promoting ICT and careers in the sector to young girls from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On April 30 2021 CCSP organized a virtual motivational workshop for 20 girls on the occasion of the International Day of Girls in Information and Communication Technologies. The speakers at the event involved Zinka Bejtic, a Digital Media professor at the American University in Sharjah (UAE), with more than 20 years of teaching and professional experience, and Amina Muzurovic, Mobile and Salesforce Developer at Mistral Company. Zinka shared her story which also included confronting gender stereotypes throughout her work experience. "Get out of your comfort zone to see what you can do if you want to," said Zinka, adding that women's empowerment starts by supporting each other, influencing the younger generations, and appearing as role models." Amina offered an IT perspective and shared the story of her path in the sector. One of the participants in the workshop was Nejra Coric, who insisted on sharing her story. Namely, after last year's Girls in ICT event organized by CCSP, Nejra remained in contact with Amina, who inspired her to pursue an IT career. Although she doubted her ability to complete a task for an IT competition, as she says, "I recalled Amina's advice and completed the task, and won one of the prizes."

On October 30^th, CCSP organized an online Meet and Code event, which gathered 10 boys and 10 girls from elementary schools across Bosnia and Herzegovina. The event included learning to program in Python. After the event, the participants outlined how important it is for them to have opportunities such as this one which allows them to learn programming in a practical sense.

This year’s Hour of Code activities included individual Hour of Code events in schools across the country from December 6 to December 11. The instructions by CCSP for all of the organizers was to take into consideration the importance of gender balanced events and equal opportunities for all those taking part in the activities, and 38 individual events were organized with a number of participants, mostly from elementary schools.

Currently, CCSP is working along with a media partner on deepening the message and idea of Hour of Code through the IT Vision – which will be organized in four regions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and is organized with the goal of demystifying STEM careers, especially for young girls who are reluctant to pursue those careers because of the still rather unfavorable position of women in this sector.

We hope that the girls who had the opportunity to take part in our events gained additional self-confidence and that together we took another step towards breaking stereotypes and increasing the number of women in the IT sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Other than these events, CCSP has promoted this campaign during the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, as well as urged the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina to support this particular project and other projects alike. However, the main achievement of these events is motivating the girls to take up courses and careers in ICT after participating in our events.

We hope that we will manage to encourage even more girls in the years to come.

Thank you for your support!