First Girls in ICT Partnership Meeting to be held 6 March

The first CARICOM Girls in ICT Partnership meeting will be held on Friday, 6 March 2020. The meeting will be held via videoconference, and will discuss the partnership’s work during 2020-2021.

The Partnership was formed last year to galvanise action in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM).

At the Seventy-Ninth Special meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) which was held on 8 November 2019, the Ministers responsible for ICT recognized that a regional partnership was a good initiative to move the region forward in various areas such as STEM/STEAM. As a result, they endorsed the CARICOM Girls in ICT partnership spearheaded by the CARICOM Secretariat.

The CARICOM Girls in ICT Partnership is envisaged to provide policy direction regarding ICT/STEM, conduct activities to bridge the ‘access to ICT’ gap by girls and young women, and to maximize the resources aimed at ICT/STEM development within the region.

The activities conducted in the partnership initiative will target students, teachers/educators, academia and policy-makers.

The partnership will also contribute to the development of the CARICOM Single ICT Space, support the CARICOM Human Resource Development Strategy 2030, and the CARICOM Strategic Plan.

The meeting on Friday will bring together senior policy makers/advisers from the Ministries responsible for ICT, Education, and Youth, as well as various regional and international entities, to share their activities and proposals for advancing the conditions of Girls through ICT in CARICOM. Among the organisations that were invited to the partnership meeting are the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), the University of the West Indies (UWI), the University of Guyana (UG), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the CARICOM Youth Ambassador Corps.

The meeting will discuss activities to mark Girls in ICT Day which is celebrated worldwide on the fourth Thursday of April each year under the theme ‘Expand Horizons, Change Attitudes’. The continuous objective of the Day is empowering girls and young women to choose careers in ICT and STEM-related fields.

Source: CARICOM TODAY