Vodacom deepen support for gender equality, conducts industrial visit for schools
Leading digital services provider, Vodacom Business Nigeria recently organized a one day industrial visit for female students from Grace High School, Gbagada and Lagoon Secondary School, Lekki as part of activities for the celebration of the recently concluded 7th edition of the International Girls in ICT Day in Nigeria.
Female students from the schools participated at the celebration where they won the Coding and STEM quiz competitions, respectively.
The International Girls in ICT Day Celebration was organized by e-Business Life Communication Limited, publishers of e-Business Life Magazine.
Whereas the event formed part of a global campaign seeking to encourage young girls to consider ICT as a profession and actualize self-development, Business Hilights gathered that International Girls’ in ICT Day is an initiative launched through the Information Technology University (ITU) with the idea of creating a global environment that will empower and encourage girls and young women to consider careers in the ICT field.
ITU came up with the idea when it observed that the number of school girls opting to study technology-related disciplines is declining in most countries worldwide.
Key target of the international body amongst others, include championing the mindset change required to open the minds of young women to the role a career in tech can play in creating exciting, far-reaching opportunities for women.
However, Vodacom Business said in fulfilment of goal five of its Sustainable Development Goals, it has created various empowerment programs such as the Women in Leadership Programme aimed at creating leadership and personal capacity in women across all employee levels; the #ConnectedSheCan campaign, a socially driven campaign aimed at celebrating the accomplishments of women within the Vodacom Business Nigeria workforce; and the youth empowerment program, the ‘Power to You’ project under the umbrella of which the Girls in ICT Day is activated, to enable both girls and technology companies to reap the benefits of greater female participation in the ICT sector.
According to Vodacom Business Nigeria’s Senior Manager for Product Development, Funke Atanda, “Vodacom is committed to accelerating the change needed to create relevant opportunities for women through the use of ICT.”
“By supporting ICT skills acquisition for young girls, bringing them into our organizations and opening their minds to new technologies that exist and continue to develop, we are able to encourage more girls to choose courses in the ICT sector,” Vodacom Business maintained.
