"We organize Girls in ICT Day because we want to show girls - someone like you is working in this sector, also achieving success". Munir Hasan, head of youth program Prothom Alo and General Secratery of Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) said at the first live session of the week-long online Girls in ICT celebrations. On the second day there was a session titled Freelancing Opportunities for Girls with open access facilities for women in Freelancing. Sessions were originally conducted in the ICT sector with scope and opportunities for girls to cope with the post Corona effect.
Earlier, the celebration began with the publication of Director International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Doreen Bogdan Martin's video message, along with a Bengali translation, on BDOSN's own site. Then one online session after another continues. Four female students studying in this sector participated in the first day's discussion with Munir Hassan. Annan Farida from Washington USA, Faiza Firoz from Computer Science and Engineering Department at Jahangirnagar University, Tisha Farhana from Daffodil International University and Fakhrun Nahar Anna, Food and Nutrition Science from University of Dhaka joined this live session. They took part in an interactive discussion and Q&A session with Munir Hasan. The session was moderated by Jahanara Amir Jimmy, Project Manager of ESD4BD.
Responding to various questions of students, Munir Hasan said, “When I entered Bangladesh Engineering University as an Assistant Programmer, I had no contemporary female programmer. There were no women in the sector as idols in front of the girls. So, no one was interested in being made that way. But now the number is slowly increasing. The participation of women contestants in various programming contests is quite remarkable. That's why we organize this celebration to bring in such idols”. He added, "If we take a look at how the boys get the news of these competitions, we can see that they usually get to know from each other at their gossips at tea stalls or on the playground, but girls don't go out of their own boundaries. So, they can't even grasp the importance of these kind of news. Also, in our various programming contests, the boys can come from outside Dhaka as easily as the girls suffer from security concerns, even their families and do not want to leave. To solve this problem, we now arrange accommodation for girls from outside Dhaka in various competitions. If it were possible to do this in the form of a project under government management, then the number of girl contestants would have increased. However, it is possible to increase the participation of girls in the ICT sector”.
The second day's live session was conducted with four female freelancers from across the country. The session was attended by senior software engineer Syedun Nessa, freelancer Afroza Siddika, and Ajanta Rizwana Mirza, BASIS's Best Software Engineer. The session was moderated by Emrazina Islam, co-founder and graphic designer of Emrazina Technologies. They talked about the current status of women in the freelancing world, the opportunities available and the challenges. The session is conducted through discussions and Q&A. Speakers advise newbie freelancers in response to various questions from viewers.
Ajanta Rezwana Mirza works with e-book content. He said, “You have to read a lot to work in this world. You need to read at least a thousand blogs about the content you are writing. One has to be aware of things like plagiarism. There is not much advantage to be gained by coming to this platform with zero knowledge. For those who are just thinking of getting started, Afroza Siddiqua said, learning with someone by the side while learning by herself, the work is much more accurate and possible to learn. At this time, she also mentioned that she would teach his mother by sitting next to her at the beginning.
In all these sessions, they did not forget to talk about the outbreak of corona. Corona's impact on the freelancing sector came up for discussion. “The blessings for freelancers are that they don't need to go out of their homes to work, speakers say. So now many people are leaning towards online dependent work. And for this opportunity, A-book content writers, graphics designers or freelancers like us are growing. At the same time, however, clients in many countries, such as Italy and Spain, have declined due to the outbreak.
Also, a three-day workshop is the first phase of programming in storytelling. The workshop was conducted online by Hablu The Great, Programming Hero Jhangkar Mahbub and Kareena Islam. They started the workshop from a very early and simple stage to encourage girls in programming.
Today is the third day of the festival, an awareness session on women's violence online or in the ICT sector. This session is about how to be careful about using online. The session will be attended by Saeed Nasirullah, Senior Assistant Commissioner, Cyber Security and Crime Division, Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime, Dhaka Metropolitan Police and Mahbuba Sultana, Senior Lecturer, Northern Bangladesh University.
Over the next seven days, this online Girls in ICT Day 2020 will be organized on the Facebook page of Bangladesh Open Source Network. Although this celebrates held on 23rd April every year with joy, this year due to the outbreak of corona, BdOSN has taken the initiative to conduct the celebration online. There will be online sessions, programming workshops, and programming contests for girls throughout the week. The event will be attended by women personalities from around the country and abroad such as Dr. Jasin Zakaria, Software Engineer, Microsoft, Puspita Nomani, Software Engineer of Trip Advisor, Dr. Mitra Kabir Post-Doctoral Research Associate of University of Manchester, Professor of Robotics and Mechanics Engineering Department of Dhaka University and President of Bangladesh Women in Technology (BWIT) Dr. Lalifa Jamal, Associate Professor of North South University. Nova Ahmed and many more.
Bangladesh Open Source Network (BDOSN) and ESDG4BD project have taken the initiative to celebrate the week-long Online Girls in ICT from April 20-27. Co-organizers of the event are Bangladesh Women in Technology (BWIT) and Internet Society Bangladesh Chapter, Genex and Pioneer. Hello Academy is the learning partner and EMK Center, Amber IT Limited and Dhaka FM 90.4 are the media partners of this celebration.