Closing the gender gap in technology has the power to change lives as it can provide access to a whole new world of opportunities for both women and young girls. For this purpose, a coding and business skills boot camp “CodeGirls” kicked off its first two cohorts on Saturday 30th June 2018. The orientation ceremony was held at The Nest I/O and was attended by the boot camp participants, trainers, mentors, sponsors and allies of the program.
The boot camp targets young girls and women aged between 15 to 30 years who has no prior tech education and aims to teach them coding and business skills with 80 – 100 hours of classroom training. Each cohort has 60 participants and they will be attending workshops for 2 hours a day, three days a week. The trainers and mentors are experienced professionals from the tech industry and they will be spending significant time in facilitation and mentoring the participants, which makes this program one of its kind.
The program is a collaborative effort between multiple partners, including ConsulNet Corporation, United Global Initiative, and WomenInTechPK, and has both international and local sponsors who have generously put in their resources to make this program possible.
The orientation ceremony was hosted by Shamim Rajani, Founder – ConsulNet Corporation and COO -Genetech Solutions, Jehan Ara, President – PASHA, and Founder – The Nest I/O was the guest of honor and she gave a keynote on “Importance of Tech Education for Women Empowerment”. Jehan mentioned the role of female entrepreneurs in the economy and shared the success stories of two female-led startups, Sheops and BoloTech, both were incubated at The Nest I/O and broke barriers for many women.
Jehan further said:
“Women have multiple roles in society and sometimes it is difficult to fit into the persona of an ideal employee. We need to be part of the system, change it internally and have more women-friendly policies.”
A video message was sent by Hasnain Walji, Executive Director of United Global Initiative, the main patron of the program and he spoke about the vision he has for the program and how a conversation with Shamim Rajani turned into a women empowerment initiative. Shamim shared two small video messages sent by the previous students of ConsulNet’s training programs who are now working on senior positions in the tech industry.
The next talk was by Faiza Yousuf, Chief Consultant – OuttaBox and Founder – WomenInTechPK, she talked about building resilience and why it is important to have the ability to adjust, retry and pivot whenever the need arises. Constant learning is important and more important is to learn from the negative experiences and emotions, which can help in building a resilient personality. She stressed upon connecting with a close-knitted and focused community which can help in both personal and professional growth and can find you friends for life.
The ceremony ended with Turab Hussain Hemani, CEO – Genetech Solutions presenting a small token of appreciation to the speakers, trainers, mentors, and sponsors of the program. CodeGirls is accepting applications for its 2nd and 3rd cohorts and you can get all the details here: http://codegirls.consulnet.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CodeGirlsbyConsulNetCorp/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CodeGirlsKhi
Website: http://codegirls.consulnet.net/
Pictures are available here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1563348697108450.1073741831.1556087457834574&type=1&l=84f7d6fdfa
