​EIT Digital​

Stockholm, Sweden, 2016, April 28​​

The international Girls in ICT day, was celebrated at EIT Digital Stockholm CLC in Kista on the 28th of April. The event was organised by four KTH students: Konstantina Pantagaki, Maryanne Owino, Mikaela Illanes and Yiwen Lu with the support of EIT Digital, Inicio, Kista Mentorspace, KTH giants and Google.
The aim of this event was to inspire and motivate young girls to pursue studies and later a career in ICT. The participants were 10 high school girls and 5 female students from KTH. The event took place at the Stockholm Colocation Center of EIT Digital and the Kista Mentorspace from 16:00 to 20:00.
First Göran Oloffson, director of EIT Digital Stockholm welcomed the girls and Zandra Norman, a software engineer in Ericsson followed, with a presentation about her journey in the ICT world. The focal point of the event was a hands-on workshop where the girls learned how to make their Android Puzzlebots interactive, using Arduino. The KTH students participating, helped the girls with any questions they had and shared their experiences from their studies in  ICT.
During the evening the girls had fun building and augmenting their puzzle bots, interacted with other young women studying ICT at university level, and learned what the Kista Mentorspace has to offer them. They were encouraged to stay in touch with us through our social media pages (Facebook: Girlsinict_mentorspace) and website (http://www.girlsinictstockholm.se) as well as with the Mentorspace, and to come back whenever they feel like it.
By the end of the event, we as the organisers were glad to see that the participants were happy and excited, and had learned from this experience. We would like to keep organising similar events to engage young girls in ongoing projects they can work on, for longer than an evening. 
We would like to thank everyone who supported us with this first step and we hope to cooperate again in the future in similar initiatives. Our goal is to make an impact in the way girls perceive ICT and vice versa.

The project group,

Konstantina, Maryanne, Mikaela and Yiwen