'Girls are doing great in all public examinations in the country, but unfortunately they are not visible much in the working space, especially in the field of ICT. However, attempt like organizing girls programming camp in different parts of the country will change the situation in coming days." These are the hopes we noticed recently held "Grace Hopper Girls camp for Programming Contest" held in three district of the country. The Dhaka camp was held from 28-30th August while Dinajpur and Mohespur camps were held 6-8 and 7-9 September respectfully. A total of 89 girls from high school and early years of university joined camp to improve their programming skill. Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) in association with University of Asia pacific, Dinajpur IT Solutionsa nd Mohespur Junior Coders organized the camps.
One of the news paper wrote, "Nafiza Islam kalpo is a six grade student of Netrokona Govt. high school. In some ways she is far advanced than other girls of her age. When her fellow students use computer just for surfing websites in online, she thought of how to create those websites. She started learning programming from her mother and now she knows C and C++ programme within one year.
Mahfuza Homaira, Student of CSE in BRAC University is learning programming since 2014. She has created a mobile app by using her experience.
They are two participants of 30 girls who attended in girls’ programming camp held recently at University of Asia Pacific. All the participants are studying in different institution from Schools to University.
Bristy Shikder, Student of Massachusetts Institute of Technology leaded this training camp as trainer. She taught the participants about basic rules of programming and problem solving. Trainers gave them problems for solving. If they faced problem, trainer helped them solve it.
Rifat Ara Proma, CSE student from MIST says about this camp, “We are living in the era of ICT. Everyone prefers working by using internet. So, there is no alternative to programming. Programming is essential for male-female. I like programming. I have attended this camp to learn more programming.”
Two trainers trained this camp. They are Bristy Shikder from MIT and Rezwan Mahmud Tonmoy from Dhaka University. Tonmoy says, “We have taught them about Dynamic programming, Graph, Data Structure, mathematics and Geometry.”
Bangladesh progressed considerably in creating skilled programmers but there are hardly any female programmers. Bristy Shikder says, “Success in any field is not comprehensive without active participation of whole section of people. Many girls are interested in learning programming. This camp offered a helping hand to some of them to excel in this sector.” (http://www.daily-sun.com/printversion/details/164561/Girls%E2%80%99-programming-camp-held).
The camp will continue to be held and a total of 15 camps would be organized in coming days, informed bdOSN