Youth takes leading role to host International Girls in ICT Day |20 April 2018

It was announced last week that the International Girls in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Day, an initiative of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), is celebrated annually on the fourth Thursday in April. Its aim is to encourage and empower young women to pursue studies and careers in ICT and to create a global environment that enables both girls and technology companies to reap the benefits of greater female participation in the ICT sector.

Seychelles will once again be part of this upcoming commemoration thanks to Beryl Payet, a young Seychellois female engineer who has taken the leading role to host the event with the support of Kalsey Belle -- a fellow engineer and President of SIDS Youth AIMS Hub (SYAH) – Seychelles. SYAH-Seychelles is a national, youth-led, non-government organisation (NGO) which seeks to promote and advance youth-led sustainable development projects.

SYAH-Seychelles in partnership with the Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB) will host a ‘Robot Building and Programming’ competition over the course of three days (April 26 – 28, 2018) on Mahé and Praslin. Young girls will be teamed into groups of four and will be provided with a robotic kit which they will use to build and program a robot which can undertake several tasks. The team to complete all of this first will be the winner.

Beryl explains that she has been a member of the SYAH-Seychelles since its creation and as members, they are encouraged to lead or be part of sustainable development projects which they are most passionate about. Beryl is particularly passionate about Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 aimed at achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls through, among others, ICT. As such, she has observed that there is a lack of young girls and women pursuing their studies and careers in ICT in Seychelles.

Beryl attributes this mainly to a lack of career guidance which she feels could provide young girls and women with more career options in this field, and eliminate the fear and stereotypic views that surround ICT at the moment.

She explains that IT or software programming engineers are not the only paths that one can take within the ICT field; career opportunities in ICT are vast but there is not enough exposure to these.

She further adds that there is a lack of visibility of young women who are currently studying or have a successful career in ICT; more visibility can help convince young girls and women that a career in such a field is achievable.

“I’ve been trying to identify ways to motivate and encourage young girls to undertake such a career path. I’ve been a speaker at numerous events held nationally, sharing my experience and journey as a female engineer. However, I believed this wasn’t enough so with the support of the amazing SYAH-Seychelles team, I took the leading role for hosting the event and we managed to take this initiative on-board as a small project and hosted our first event in 2016,” shares Beryl.

The event is being targeted mainly at young girls and women in secondary and post-secondary institutions. However, other organisations are also encouraged to embrace this initiative and to also organise events at any time during the year, so that there is a national effort to encourage more young women to join the industry.

Together with SYAH-Seychelles, Beryl and Kalsey will be more than willing to help with the organisation/development of these activities.

According to Beryl, there is a pressing need for a wide range of ICT talents and so highly qualified women in technical fields have significant opportunities available to them.

She adds that the European Union has predicted that there will be a skills gap of over 500,000 ICT jobs in Europe by 2020. It has also been proven that a gender-balanced workforce reflects customer bases more accurately, enhances productivity and innovation and leads to better financial results.

Beryl reminds young girls and women that “we are fortunate that girls and boys are given equal opportunities in Seychelles when it comes to the courses that they want to pursue. With the growing developments of ICT and the increasing career opportunities in ICT, you should carefully consider and explore careers in the ICT field and search for female role models who can guide you through”.