Twenty-five girls between the ages of 14 and 16 on Saturday graduated with certificates from a five-week coding programme hosted at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown.
A few of the girls proudly displaying their certificates in the presence of officials from the Public Telecommunications Ministry
This year’s Girls’ Code Camp is the second annual training hosted by the Public Telecommunications Ministry. The Outreach Coordinator, Donnella Collison, explained that the Ministry decided to focus its attention on girls, recognising that a gender gap exists in the computer science field, with men dominating these jobs.
Further, Collison pointed out that this year’s batch of students was selected from lower-performing schools to mend the gap which exists, to hopefully show persons that Information Technology is not only for persons who are “very educated”.
One such student, Delisa Rose, a 14-year-old student of East Ruimveldt Secondary explained that she was excited to be part of the training. She shared, “I learnt how to properly do an animation, which I never knew how to do. I also learnt how to code. It was hard in the beginning but then I got help and it was very easy”. Rose said she hopes to use the knowledge she gained to begin her career.
Sherola Brandt, a 16-year-old student of St John’s Secondary explained, “I have learnt Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word Documents and how to build a scratch animation”. Brandt said most of these areas were new to her and was challenging at first but she was motivated by her colleagues to learn.
Another student, 15-year-old Angeleena Thompson of South Ruimveldt Secondary said she was eager to learn more about coding, given that she attended the first training held last year. She said, “When I went to the last computer classes we learnt simple things but when I came here I learnt more difficult things like how to build a web page and so forth”.
The girls were involved in activities such as scratch and block lead programming, coding, problem-solving, storytelling and learning about the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). They were also being taught how to use programming to solve problems relating to the SDGs during the sessions.
