It’s terribly unfortunate that even in this day and age, women have yet to be completely incorporated in the tech world. The territory is still considered male-dominated, with women occupying less than 30% of tech jobs. To bring a change in this scenario, there should be a great contribution from both govt. and non-govt. sector. From this concept, ICT camp was organized specially for women at New Model University College under the initiative of Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) on 12th November, 2019. A total of 92 undergrad female students of this college participated in this camp. This camp was designed with four sessions throughout the day. The camp was inaugurated by Md. Ruhul Amin, Principal of the college. Also present were Mahmudul Hasan Rizvi, head of the college's computer science and engineering department, and Jasmine Akhter, assistant program officer of BdOSN.
The first session of the camp was "Career Opportunities and Growth at BPO for Women". This session includes the brief discussion about the opportunity for women in the workplace of BPO industry. Sabrina Haque, Process Head of BPO Operations and Quality Control Management of Impel Service and Solutions Limited, a leading BPO company in the country, has conducted this session. Sabrina Haque commented that a woman can work in this field only if she has the mentality of team management, spontaneous attitude, the mentality of proving herself and basic knowledge of information technology. Science or non-science, students of any department can build their position in BPO industry with basic knowledge of information technology.
Achia Nila, the founder of Women in Digital, also conducted the second session of the camp to unveil the huge door that opens the door to women's work in the information technology workplace. This session was entitled with “Opportunities for girls and women in ICT World”. In the current age of information technology, women are now working in equal rhythm with men, using skills such as artificial intelligence, block chains, big data, programming, etc. She encourages students to become entrepreneurs by applying their innovative thinking.
She also cited the example of his own organization as all the workers of her organization is female. She mentioned that there are many jobs being created for women in Bangladesh. All they need is women skills and awareness as well.”
Another session on digital marketing titled “Digital & Social Media Marketing as a Career” was conducted by Ruhul Amin Rony, Head of Digital Communications at SSL Wireless. He has been working with digital marketing for more than 10 years. He gives students a complete idea of how easily product acceptance can be increased through market analysis.
The last session of the camp on graphics design and freelancing was conducted by Emrazina Islam, co-founder of Emrazina Technologies. The session was entitled with “Graphic Design to Freelance Career Design-A path to discover”. She gave students ideas on the topics of graphics design and freelancing. Women are now opting for areas like outsourcing through image editing, logo design, etc. She said that anyone starting with a basic idea can build a career in this industry.
Beside the ICT camp, a three-day long programming camp and a career talk has been organized in this college. Programming Camp named Grace Hopper Girls Programming Camp has been organized with 41 participants where 31 participants are female students on 13, 14 and 16th November, 2019. Through this camp students acquired knowledge on the programming language, online contest, online platform and online judge. After this camp, students took place in an online programming contest. The winner of this contest were awarded with certificates and crests.
To provide a clear concept about what the current and future profession might look like and the required skill for surviving this new world of technology, a career talk has been organized in the same college on 16th November. Munir Hassan, head of Youth Program, Daily Prothom Alo and general secretary of BDOSN conducted this event.The prevailing trend of the current job, half of it will disappear within the next few years. There will be new workplaces where there are only opportunities for technical job such as Big Data, Machine Learning, Block Chain, Cyber Security, Data mining or Artificial Intelligence. The market will occupy around 1 crore new jobs in the next 20 years. Munir Hasan said that those who prepared themselves, they would survive in the world of technology. He told the students that in order to survive the next day, you must be a problem solver. If you can find a smart solution to those problems which exist in all around, then there will be entrepreneurs, chip designers, robotics experts, cyber specialists or data scientists.
Public university students have many opportunities to prepare themselves for the current job market, but students of national universities are lagging behind. With that in mind, BdOSN has organized an ICT camp, a three-day long programming camp and a career talk. Under the three years project uner BdOSN aims to promote a pool of skilled women worker who can lead the future economy of our country.
On 2 November, 2019 Grace Hopper Girls Programming Camp was held at Z. H. Sikder University of Science & Technology in Shariatpur. A total of 36 undergraduate female students of Computer Science and Engineering Department of the University are participating in this camp organized by the Bangladesh Open Source Network (BDOSN). Due to the lack of practical application of the knowledge acquired by the students in our current textual education system, female students cannot be able to enter the work market. As a result, many female students drop out before entering the workplace. Therefore, if it is possible to empower these women students before entering the workplace, then women workers can contribute immensely to advance Bangladesh in information technology.
From this idea, BDOSN has started a 3-year project where our female students from graduation level are brought to the umbrella of the education of information a communication technology and make them more skilled in IT sector.
In this connection, a two-day camp at the University of Science and Technology in Shariatpur provides a basic knowledge to solve any practical problems through coding to the students. The first day of the camp, students learned about the programming language what they need to understand any problem in programming and the concept of online platform and online judge in which a programming contest is occurred. And all day long they receive the training on how to solve a problem in a contest. The next day of the camp on 3rd November, they participated in an online programming contest where they had to solve some problems provided by the assigned mentor. On the basis of the performance of the students, first three position holder students were awarded by certificates and crests.
University's computer science and engineering department chairman and assistant professor Mahfuzur Rahman and lecturer Alamgir Hossain were present there. The camp is headed by BDOSN's mentors Humayun Kabir and Masud Parvez.
After the day, a hands on job preparation workshop was held at that university to spread the information of our ICT based workplace among the female students so that they would not be puzzled after their graduation. Around 20 female students participated in this workshop.
A job preparation workshop was held at Northern University Mirpur Road campus located in Dhaka. Beside the workshop, BdOSN’s 15th birthday has been also celebrated in 24 October, 2019. Assistant Professor and Co-ordinator of the Faculty of Business, Md. Shariful Islam, inaugurated the event. Along with senior lecturer of the university Farzana Chowdhury, lecturers Oli Ullah Chowdhury and Mariyama Muafa were present there. BdOSN’s Chief Coordinator and Northern University Senior Lecturer Mahbuba Moni and Program Coordinator Muntasir Morshed were also present there.
After the inauguration, the job preparation workshop was started for the 53 undergraduate students of the university. This workshop provides a thorough idea of what skills are required before entering the workplace. The number of unemployed is increasing in the country due to lack of necessary skills even after completing studies at university level. Besides, there is limited participation of girls in the workplace. Many women students cannot enter the workplace even if they reach the university through social taboo and obstacles. For this reason, a survey by BdOSN found that these women drop out after the end of the study due to lack of proper guidance and skills. Bangladesh Open Source Network (BDOSN) has been working from the beginning to reduce the number of educated unemployed and degraded women. In its continuation, BDOSN has started the "Missing Daughter" program where various skills development training, job-preparation workshops, career talk, internships or 2-to-3-day job attachments etc. were organized to ensure the female presence in the workplace. Under this "Missing Daughter" program, Bangladesh Open Source Network is running a three-year project to make women skilled. Assistant Professor and Co-ordinator of Northern University Md. Shariful Islam said, "If women can prepare themselves for the workplace before the end of their studies, both women and men can equally contribute to the sustainable development of the country." He appreciated all its activities. The event was conducted by Shakhira Afroz, Asst. program officer of BdOSN.
Having practical knowledge for a successful professional career is a must in the present context. In this respect, a Job Exposure Visit can serve the purposes aligned to it by the motto of “Seeing is believing”. The students of City University totaling 20 got this opportunity to visit one of the most renowned BPO Company, Genex Infosys Ltd situated at Nikunja, Dhaka.
ESDG project of Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) has recently organized a Job Exposure Visit on 22 October, 2019 as a part of job placement with 20 female students of different levels of CSE department of City University. On the other hand, Genex, part of the IPE Group UK, is the leading outsourcing providers of customer experience management and trusted by world’s leading brands where they achieve results through transforming their clients' businesses with delivering excellence in customer experience. Moreover, they are experts in people interactions which gives them the edge in delivering a superior customer experience in every contact.
Two-day Grace Hopper Girls’ Programming Camp held at Comilla University, Comilla at 16 & 17 October and Pundra Science and Engineering Technology, Bogra at 21 & 22 October, 2019. These camps were organized by Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN).
This camp is organized mainly to improve the skills of programming for undergraduate female students. Now-a-days women students are not entering the workplace due to lack of proper skills while studying at university level with science and information technology. And BDOSN is working towards that goal.
Two-day Grace Hopper Girls’ Programming Camp held at City University, Panthapath, Dhaka. The camp was organized in collaboration with Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) and City University. A total of 40 students from the Computer Science and Engineering Department participated in the camp.
The camp is organized mainly to improve the skills of programming for undergraduate female students. Now-a-days women students are not entering the workplace due to lack of proper skills while studying at university level with science and information technology. And BDOSN is working towards that goal.
Women skilled in information technology can take Bangladesh to a unique height in the global market. Bangladesh can also be self-reliant. Establishment of equal participation of men and women in the workplace can be established. And for that purpose, Bangladesh Open Source Network is organizing various activities across the country.
In continuation of this, the three-day Grace Hopper Girls Programming Camp, a day-long ICT camp and a job-preparation workshop have been completed at Rangpur Engineering College in Rangpur Division. Rangpur Engineering College (REC) is affiliated by the University of Rajshahi. The camp was organized in collaboration with Rangpur Engineering College and Bangladesh Open Source Network. These programs are organized to give an idea of the huge potential that is open to graduate students in the information technology sector. A total of 65 women graduating students of Computer Science and Engineering Department and Information and Communication Department has participated in the three-day event.
