Blog
International Women’s Day 2023 – DigitALL
This year, all of us at Team Kenya were very excited to learn the theme for International Women’s Day – ‘DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality’. Getting girls into digital has been one of Team Kenya’s key aims for our girls education projects in Ndhiwa. Our partner organisation Twende Pamoja have helped bridge the digital divide by providing girls and women with IT training in our purpose-built Learning Resource Centre (LRC).
The UN recognises that not only does the digital divide negatively affect women and girls, but it also damages the entire world’s economy. As per the UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2022 report: “women’s exclusion from the digital world has shaved $1 trillion from the gross domestic product of low- and middle-income countries in the last decade—a loss that will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025 without action”. This demonstrates that lower income countries, such as Kenya, are suffering most from the digital divide and therefore, in order to sustainably develop the economy, women and girls must have an equal access to technology.
Team Kenya are determined to help fight for digital equality. Following the establishment of our LRC in 2019, Team Kenya and Twende Pamoja have been able to provide access to technology for some of Ndhiwa’s most vulnerable girls. The LRC was built with an IT room which is equipped with computers and tablets so that girls can receive an education on technology and STEM subjects.
The IT room provides training courses for both children and adults, with facilities continually being updated and growing. We recognise the importance of providing holistic programmes to help support entire communities. As a result, our IT facilities are used to train not only girls in our partner schools, but also their mothers, on the essential skills needed to thrive in an increasingly digital world. Our LRC is open to everyone, and provides IT access and training opportunities for teachers, school children, and residents of Ndhiwa. As a result, it has been used by over 10,000 people since it first opened in 2019.
Funding from the Inspiring Leadership Trust in 2021 allowed us to purchase tablets, data bundles and provide digital support to enable 15 girls and women to take part in an education programme from the Inspiring Futures Academy. This programme helped teach participants how to reach their fullest potential, with lessons surrounding morals, values, cultural intelligence, and emotional resilience. The reaction and lessons learned from the programme were described as “life-changing” by Risper, one of the women who took part. Programmes such as these help us to combat digital exclusion and enrich the educational experience of women and girls in Ndhiwa.
In future, Team Kenya are focused on creating an enabling environment for girls in our 16 partner schools and increase their educational opportunities by addressing the gender gap in STEM and encouraging engagement in extracurricular activities involving digital. We want to work with teachers, particularly female teachers, parents, and community leaders to raise awareness of the importance of girls’ education, especially in STEM subjects – which are important cornerstones of the Kenya Vision 2030. We also want to create further opportunities for girls to develop confidence and skills, including leadership and peer mentoring skills through IT access.
We hope that this International Women’s Day will highlight the absolute necessity of girls having an equal access to digital, and how work such as ours is essential in addressing the digital divide, enabling sustainable economic development, and combating gender inequality.
