Knowledge the best gift for March 8: 'Girls in ICT' workshop held in organization of CPCD

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - About a hundred girls from primary and secondary schools in the Sarajevo Canton and Sarajevo-Romanija region attended the "Girls in ICT" workshop today, or in free translation, "Girls in Information and Communication Technology".

The workshop was held at the Third Gymnasium in Sarajevo, organized by the Center for Promotion of Civil Society, and funded by Microsoft BiH, the Center for Promotion of Civil Society (CPCD) announced.

"The best gift we can give women for March 8 is knowledge," said CPCD Director Aida Daguda at the opening of the workshop.

Daguda pointed out that women were equal to men in the early stages of the development of information and communication technology, but that this is no longer the case today, due to negative social trends. According to estimates, women make up only about 20% of employees in the IT industry in BiH today. Therefore, the Center for Promotion of Civil Society has been persistently working for years, among other projects to empower women in BiH society, to increase this number through various activities such as "Hour of Code" or today's workshop.

Mirad Maglić, Country Representative of Microsoft BiH, agreed that the education of young people, especially women, is extremely important.

Of the total number of employees at Microsoft in Bosnia and Herzegovina, about 30% are women, a figure that Maglić emphasized they will strive to increase in the future. The workshop held today was organized with this goal in mind, aiming to increase the self-confidence of girls through the stories of successful women in this industry, in addition to providing concrete knowledge and skills.

One such story is that of Anela Husković, who holds the position of Area Solution Architect at Microsoft, and who today conducted a workshop for young participants on artificial intelligence, an area in which she is an expert. As she said, three years of experience in this branch of the IT industry, which is only five years "old", is enough to make her experienced.

Precisely the fact that it is a relatively young branch of the IT industry allowed her to assert herself as a woman in this field.

Family support, she said, is the most important for the successful path of young women and their affirmation in fields like the IT industry, where their representation is low, but events like this, which primarily offer self-confidence to young girls, are also of exceptional importance.

Lejla Hadžiabdić, Senior Partner Development Manager at Microsoft Central and Eastern Europe, also spoke about her path to success in the IT industry. Although a manager, Hadžiabdić, as a woman, encountered prejudices in the IT industry, but she emphasized that she did not pay attention to them.

In addition to them, participants today had the opportunity to learn from Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert Adin Begić and CEO of App Impact Admir Tuzović.

The girls who attended today's workshop did not hide their satisfaction with both the new things they learned and the experiences of their older colleagues.

Teodora Marković, a student of the IT sector of the Electrical Engineering Department of the "28. juni" High School in Istočno Sarajevo, is determined to try her hand in this profession in the future. It is difficult, but as she says, love prevails. Her IT sector class has 22 boys and only four girls. This represents a classic indicator that women are still in a subordinate position in the IT industry, but Teodora is sure that this will change in the future, and she intends to contribute to that change.

The main goal of the "Girls in ICT" workshop is to encourage girls who show talent and interest in the IT profession to choose careers in this sector, and to break stereotypes about girls and women in science.

The interactive workshop covered topics from the fields of information technology and computer science, such as Microsoft Azure Artificial Intelligence, HTML, CSS, JavaScript within Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, and programming with MicroBits.