iEARN Kenya and The Catholic University of East Africa

4/26/2017

Africa, Kenya, Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Bogani East Road, Nairobi, Nairobi County, Kenya

Girls in ICT day was celebrated at the catholic University of East Africa – Nairobi.

The event was organized and implemented in collaboration with iEARN Kenya chapter.

 Key events of the day were as follows:

• The launch of Shared-Studios Portal project - iEARN-Kenya and Shared_Studios have created an Internet that enables one to walk through. The Shared_Studios concept is a multidisciplinary art, design and technology collective founded in 2014. With key innovations in hardware, software, and design, our vision is to build a global community to investigate how creative space is shared around the world. We envision a world where girls in ICT and those aspiring to join, would talk, work, collaborate, debate on innovations, skills, academic and career topics, and play across all forms of distance.

Objectives of the Portal Rooms project

• -To provide access to global network of over twenty different sites.
• -Connect young people to special events that occur at conferences such as SXSW, Skoll World Forum and the main Ted conference etc.
• -Promote Project Based Learning-PBL and service learning programs
• -Provide and promote dialogues and events among scholars and researchers.
• -Coordinate and schedule special events, artist collaborations, classroom visits, and performances
• -Promote community of practice: a place for educators and learners making a difference.
• -Enhance outreach of Partner institutions like CUEA in the Community and globally

Tech-Skills talk in preparation for the upcoming coding Bootcamps for girls in all the institutions of higher learning in Kenya.

The participants were taken through an interactive session where they discussed on the needs to enable girls acquire the necessary tech- skills. This was seen as the best way to help Girls interested in ICT careers to be able to compete favorably in the tech world.

The program will bring coding skills to creative entrepreneurs (young women) to make them able to build their own applications, find a job in the tech industry (as junior developer or product manager) and collaborate efficiently with their future dev teams.

Teams were selected to start the planning for the bootcamp: they were to select tech-        skills to trained on, prospective participants, dates and partners to be involved.